Chuck vs Dunder Mifflin
by TwotoTenth
Summary: Team Chuck is forced to leave LA, and sets up shop in Scranton. How will they get along with their new Office mates? And can they keep their secret lives away from prying eyes? Chuck/Office crossover. Prequel to Sarah vs. the FBI.
1. Necessitation

A/N: Presenting the somewhat-awaited prequel of Sarah vs. the FBI. It'll eventually be an Office crossover, but this chapter is pure Chuck.

I come not to own Chuck, but to borrow its characters.

* * *

Chapter 1: Necessitation

"Chuck?"

"Hmm?"

Sarah Walker sighed. In many ways, the last eight weeks had been the most fulfilling of her tenure with the CIA. Team Bartowski had spent that period blowing away its already-excellent performance record, dismantling nearly every aspect of Fulcrum's operations in the Southwestern United States. The formerly dangerous rogue splinter of the CIA was now on the brink of destruction.

The reason for the team's staggering success wasn't the new Intersect, to everyone's surprise. Since re-uploading the computer into his brain (and immediately stunning his partners by devastating an enemy strike team with spontaneously generated Kung Fu skills), Chuck had only occasionally been given new abilities. These were always short-lived, and usually borderline ridiculous.

However, the new version of the Intersect also had its benefits. Foremost among them were its significantly enhanced data access and processing functions. The improvement was so great that Casey, the NSA representative on the team, would now sometimes fail to notice Chuck's "flashes." Also key was the fact that Chuck had really learned to separate the raw information from his interpretation of it, which meant the team was misdirected a lot less frequently than it had been in the past.

The other major improvement to the team's performance arose from the addition of Orion's wrist computer. The gift from Chuck's technological genius father was an electronic marvel, and Chuck had mastered it unbelievably quickly. The team could now subvert any surveillance device, open or close any electrically operated door, and defeat any digital lock. Half the time, the most difficult part of the mission was staying alert enough to deal with the guards. And the other half, the guards never even knew the team had been there. Sarah imagined that several Fulcrum bases had held very awkward morning meetings after the discovery of inexplicably missing data and damaged equipment.

General Beckman, NSA director and project supervisor, was practically giddy during most of the team's mission briefings. Of course, giddy for the General meant that she occasionally looked like she might be thinking about smiling. More importantly, in this case, it also meant that the diminutive redhead had adopted an unofficial "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the matter of Chuck and Sarah's relationship. Sarah's memory drifted briefly back to that happy day.

_"General, I had one more question before you go."_

_"What is it, Colonel Casey?"_

_"I was wondering if I might get a few days' vacation. It's been nearly two years since I last visited my family, after all."_

_"Well, normally that would go against protocol while you're on station. But the success of this team has been so far beyond any reasonable expectation that I'm willing to overlook some violations of protocol where you're concerned, as long as the current high quality of your results is maintained."_

Sarah was sure that Beckman had stared directly at her as she uttered that last sentence. She'd headed for Chuck's apartment later that night with her heart pounding, planning on asking him for another chance at a real date. But when she'd seen the tentative smile that crossed his face as he answered the door, her nervousness had been swept away and replaced by some definite non-first-date-appropriate behavior.

The relationship had been… well, great. Not that Sarah had much to compare it with. Most of her previous experience had been predominantly physically focused. And she and Chuck had more than matched anything she'd ever done in the bedroom… or the kitchen… or the freezer at the Orange Orange. In fact, he'd proven proficient enough that Sarah privately wondered whether the Intersect was helping him out. And yet, with all that, she found herself enjoying the other aspects of the relationship just as much. It helped, of course, that Chuck was funny, and sweet, and had learned far more about her tastes than she'd ever expected. But it wasn't just that he was a great boyfriend. The two of them seemed to be perfectly in sync in every way – on missions, in conversation, in bed. Sarah had never imagined being as rapturously happy as she was with Chuck.

Which made it all the more frustrating when he closed himself off. It had been happening more often over the past week, and tonight was no exception. Reminding herself that she'd done the same thing for a year and a half, Sarah determined not to let him fence her out easily.

"Okay, Chuck, talk to me. What's bothering you?"

"It's… nothing."

He hadn't been like this since… since Mauser. Sarah suddenly realized that Chuck only withdrew when she'd pushed him away somehow.

"I know you better than that. Is it something I did?"

Chuck looked startled, and Sarah couldn't help smiling at his adorable look of surprise. "What? No, God no. Nothing like that. I'm just… worried."

"About what?" she prodded.

He sighed. "About the ring."

Sarah almost choked on a dumpling. Beckman had accepted their relationship because she was able to look the other way. If Chuck was thinking about… well, the General's tacit approval would practically leap out the window.

"What?" she barely managed to squeak.

"You know, the Ring." Chuck lowered his voice and continued, "'Spies, Agent Walker. The best.' Ambush in the Intersect room. Those guys."

Sarah shook her head slightly. That made more sense… although still not a lot. "Why are you worried about the Ring? We haven't gotten a hint of their existence since the upload."

"That doesn't bother you?" he queried.

She shrugged. "We can't do anything about them if they don't show up… unless you flash, of course."

Chuck nodded slowly. "That's what worries me." Sarah gave him a confused look, and he continued. "As a computer, the Intersect is supposed to recognize patterns, right?" She nodded. "But we don't have a computer. We have me."

"Okay…" Sarah replied dubiously.

"Well, there should be a pattern out there somewhere," he insisted. "I mean, these guys can't just have spontaneously appeared in the Intersect room, right? They have to be up to something."

"What are you saying, Chuck?"

He drew in a deep, nervous breath. "What if the connections are out there, and I just haven't made them? What if I'm not a good enough Intersect?"

Sarah barely managed to keep from scoffing at the idea. "Chuck, you're the only person who could handle this – even the planned upload into Bryce was a calculated risk, and there were no other viable candidates in the Agency. You've performed brilliantly for nearly two years, with no training to speak of. You're the biggest reason that Fulcrum's operational base in the Southwest has been devastated – even Casey admits that." It wasn't just Casey – despite her famed loathing for all things Bartowski, even _Beckman_ had finally admitted that Chuck was now invaluable. "You realize they've had to send us outside of California just to find anything for us to do in the last two weeks? Our last mission was to freaking New Mexico. Chuck, nobody could do better than you, because there is nobody better than you."

Chuck hesitated before responding quietly: "Bryce found them."

Sarah fired off a mental fusillade of curses at her late ex for the way he managed to give his old roommate an inferiority complex even from beyond the grave. "Bryce could have been wrong – it did happen occasionally." Chuck creased his forehead doubtfully, and she pressed on, unwilling to concede to his lack of confidence. "Look, let's just enjoy tonight, all right? We'll finish dinner, and then we'll head back to my place, and we'll worry about the Ring tomorrow." Sarah punctuated her last statement by raising her eyebrows, and was rewarded with a blush and a grin. She smiled victoriously and leaned across the table, intent on completely taking Chuck's mind off anything having to do with top-secret spy organizations.

* * *

Chuck and his CIA protector made their way down the third-floor hallway at Sarah's hotel, hands linked and swinging loosely as they walked. As they reached her door, Sarah extracted her room key from her purse, and then paused.

"The hair's been moved."

Chuck had no idea what hair she was talking about, and his face clearly reflected his confusion.

"I put it across my door handle to let me know if someone's been in the room," she explained. Drawing her gun and stepping carefully to the side of the door, she unlocked it and pushed it open.

In response, three bullets embedded themselves into the wall on the opposite side of the hall.

"Chuck…" she started warily.

"Stay in the hall?" he finished. Sarah nodded, but without the small smile he'd hoped would accompany the inside joke. Ducking, she rolled through and across the doorway and into the small kitchen of her suite. That drew more gunfire from inside the room. As the noise died down, Chuck heard a soft, feminine grunt of pain from just inside the door. Then, he flashed.

Not only were the revised Intersect's ability flashes generally bizarre, but they were uniformly accompanied by an unpleasant bout of nausea. This one was no exception. Chuck closed his eyes as he fought the brief urge to vomit and assessed his options. Only one possible use for his newfound skills came to mind.

Waiting for a break in the shooting, he bolted down the hall to the fire stairs. Taking them two at a time, he bounded past the fourth floor and out onto the roof. Pausing to catch his breath, he walked to the edge of the roof and counted balconies until he found the correct location. He took three steps back, and stopped to stretch briefly.

Taking a deep breath, Chuck accelerated toward the edge of the building and launched himself into space.

* * *

Sarah grimaced. She was down to her last magazine, and her shoulder was still sore from her awkward landing on the roll into the room. Her assailants – two of them, from what she'd heard_ –_ seemed to have no shortage of ammunition, and had managed to improvise pretty impressive fortifications out of hotel room furniture. She was pretty sure she'd been in worse situations, but this one was pretty bad. At least she could take solace in Chuck's escape.

Suddenly, the bedroom window shattered. Sarah's tormentors responded immediately, turning to pour bullets into the night air. Guessing that they'd also be seeking cover from the window, Sarah poked her head above the kitchen counter, and saw one man with his back exposed. Unwilling to gamble that her attackers weren't wearing bulletproof vests, Sarah went for a head shot, and was rewarded by the sight of her target slumping to the ground. She quickly ducked back behind the counter and listened intently for an indication of her remaining opponent's location. Leaning carefully out into the entryway of the room, she directed a single shot through the dust ruffle of her bed, and was rewarded with a _thwack_ and a groan. Springing quickly into action, she leaped onto the bed, rolled across the mattress, and gave the second man a hole in the side of his head to match the one in his left knee.

Sarah advanced cautiously toward the window. Peering out through the hole, she found her erstwhile rescuer cowering in the corner of the balcony.

"Chuck?"

"Sarah! Thank God." He leaped to his feet and quickly climbed into the room. "Are you all right? You sounded hurt…"

"I'm fine. I just landed funny when I rolled through the door. It's nothing." She paused and eyed him suspiciously. "How did you get out there? You were supposed to stay in the hall!"

"Hey, I didn't come into the room. Doesn't that honor the spirit of the agreement?" Sarah's responding stare indicated that she was going to insist on the exact terms. "Fine. How did I get here? Well, uhh, let's just say that I've been an accomplished gymnast for at least…" Chuck glanced at his watch. "Three minutes now."

Sarah's face whitened. "You jumped off of the ROOF!?"

"I caught the railing…" came the sheepish reply.

The CIA agent's face abruptly regained its coloring, turning an angry red. "Are you insane? You could have…"

"But I didn't! I'm fine! At least I will be if you stop hitting me!"

She declined, instead punctuating each word with a smack to the shoulder. "Don't! Ever! Do that! Again!"

"Gah! Okay! Next time there are assassins waiting in your hotel room, I promise to create a distraction that allows you to kill them by climbing up to your window from the ground floor."

Sarah's angry glower was gradually replaced by a thoughtful frown as the implications of the evening's events sunk in.

She had been ambushed. By assassins. At home.

This was not good.

* * *

"It seems Agent Walker's identity has been compromised."

General Beckman never ceased to be amazed at how much of her time was spent stating the obvious.

"General, what does this mean?" Chuck asked.

"Normally in this situation, we would reassign a new agent to take her place. However," she added, quickly cutting off Chuck's nascent protest, "the importance of this team and the outstanding quality of its results allow me to offer you a more palatable option. Since Agent Walker has established a considerable… _comfort level_ with the Intersect, it is very likely that Mr. Bartowski has also appeared on the radar of whoever sent those two men. In my opinion, that means that the best course of action is to relocate the entire team."

"Relocate, General? Are we being split up?" Sarah asked.

The General found herself once again questioning the wisdom of keeping such an obviously compromised team intact. But as it always had so far, their performance record won out. "No, Agent Walker. You'll be moved as a group. We've put together several possible bases of operations for the three of you in areas where the fight against Fulcrum has not gone as well as in California. I expect a decision within 48 hours." Letting the team choose its new location was highly unusual. Beckman hoped they appreciated the significance of that concession.

"Wait, General."

Of course they didn't. "Yes, Mr. Bartowski?"

"If these people know who I am, wouldn't they also know about Ellie and Devon?"

The asset's concern for his family was a predictable irritant. However, that concern also made their protection operationally valuable; if Fulcrum were to target them, the Intersect would fall apart. "That is a possibility, Mr. Bartowski. If you like, I can have your sister and her husband entered into the Witness Protection Program."

"They can't come with us?"

Beckman answered the absurd proposal with an incredulous stare. "We're already taking a substantial risk relocating a three-person team, Mr. Bartowski. Adding two more people to the group would draw far too much attention, and would contribute virtually nothing to the mission." Chuck stiffened visibly. "You will be permitted to contact your family indirectly through the US Marshals."

"It's a good offer, Chuck. It'll keep them safe," Sarah said quietly. Beckman happily allowed the CIA agent to argue her point in hopes that the unpredictable asset would react more favorably to a sympathetic speaker.

Chuck nodded after a moment. "What do we tell them, General?"

Biting back a sarcastic _Why tell them anything?_, the General considered the question carefully. "As I recall, your brother-in-law is already aware that you work with us in some capacity." The team nodded. "You may inform your sister of the same thing, and give both of them a general idea of what has happened to necessitate their relocation. No mention of the Intersect, and no mission details of any kind. Now, if there are no further questions…"

"General?"

Beckman glared menacingly at the lastest interruption from the nerd. He _really_ needed to learn when to quit.

"Thank you."

The director of the NSA smiled thinly as she severed the connection with no response.

* * *

Colonel John Casey opened the door and greeted the rest of his team with the grunt Bartowski had once referred to as "the number 17 – 'great, you again.'" That one had actually stung, just a little. It might not have been a strictly friendly grunt, but the NSA agent didn't think it was anything more hostile than simple neutral acknowledgement.

"How was the talk?" Casey already knew exactly how it had gone, of course – he'd been listening intently. It had been smoother than he'd expected through the basic spy stuff. Then they'd reached the part about splitting the family up. That had resulted in a hurricane-force blast of Ellie's special brand of sarcastic anger, culminating in a slammed bedroom door and a tearful younger brother. Eventually, Walker had gone into the room and quietly torn Ellie a new one for the better part of ten minutes. Her efforts had improved the situation somewhat, but it was still a very tense afternoon.

Given all that had happened, Casey considered himself lucky that the only daggers Walker had used to answer his intentionally antagonistic question were in her silent stare. He wordlessly stepped aside and let the couple enter his apartment.

"Beckman sent our options over," he said, passing Walker a manila folder containing nine sheets of paper. She looked over each one, then passed them to the team's third member. Bartowski, in turn, laid the pages out in a 3-by-3 square on the coffee table. Casey figured the nerd was trying to set up some kind of pros and cons list… but that didn't explain why he was walking across the room.

"Sarah, can I borrow one of your knives?"

Or why he was asking for a weapon.

"Sure, Chuck… mind if I ask why?" the blond agent asked as she withdrew a three-inch blade from her ankle sheath and passed it over.

"Because I'm tired, and because there's not going to be any appreciable difference between any of our options, and because I don't think you could throw one of those things randomly if you tried."

The only thing that terrified Casey more than Bartowski with a knife was Bartowski with a knife that he planned to fling haphazardly around the room. He searched frantically for the best available cover, choosing to duck into the kitchen.

Chuck wound up and hurled the blade, sticking it through the paper in the upper left-hand corner of the group, a quarter inch deep into the table. He walked over to survey his handiwork.

"Scranton, Pennsylvania. The William Randolph Real Estate Group, a CIA shell company, has purchased an office building here, and is hiring a security director and an IT professional to better serve its tenants. I guess that leaves Sarah as the receptionist for the paper wholesaler that has its offices in the building – unless you'd rather take that one, Casey."

That drew a smile from one handler, and the number 23 grunt – grudging amusement – from the other. Casey suddenly realized that he'd used that one a lot more often on this assignment than ever before.

The team exchanged wordless goodnights, and Casey prepared to report the selected location to his superior officer. "Scranton, Pennsylvania," he mumbled in muted disbelief. "As if LA wasn't boring enough."

* * *

A/N: Bit of housekeeping down here... I'm planning on alternating the updates to this story between the Chuck and Office categories, so if you want to keep up, either watch for it in both places, or put the story on alert.

I debated back and forth over whether to include the actual conversation with Ellie and Devon in this chapter, and decided that it didn't exactly advance the plot of the story. But if enough people would like to see it, I could write it up as a companion one-shot.

Last thing - I'm looking for a beta on this story, so if anyone who's familiar with both Chuck and the Office would be interested in helping out, let me know. Thanks!


	2. Relocation

A/N: Apprehension seems to exist among the people of NBC that by the publishing of this chapter their ownership of Chuck and the Office is to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection.

Let's get the Scranton side of things rolling, shall we? In case it's not clear from the text, the Office starting point for this story is just before Company Picnic, and goes AU after that.

Thanks to KathGrangerPotter for serving as my sounding board for this chapter.

* * *

Chapter 2: Relocation

"Morning." Jim waved at the building's new security supervisor on his way into the office, drawing only a muffled grunt in reply. The gruff man didn't seem like the type who would take teasing very well – he'd either ignore it, or shove you up against the nearest wall. That was unfortunate, because Jim Halpert was a board-certified expert in messing with people. Harassing his less-savory coworkers was one of the two things that kept him sane in his impossibly dull job as a salesman for Dunder Mifflin paper. The other thing, which had recently returned from an ill-fated three-week hiatus, was standing next to him in the elevator.

"Friendly guy. We should ask him to dinner. Maybe go away for a weekend," commented Pam Beesly, Jim's coworker, fiancée, and partner in crime.

"I wonder if he'd be interested in a threesome." Jim judged that the prolonged giggle he earned was well worth the accompanying indignant slap on the arm.

* * *

Pam stole a glance at the former headquarters of the short-lived Michael Scott Paper Company as the couple walked down the hall. "Looks like someone else is already stuck in the good old converted broom closet." The sign on the door proclaimed it to be the new IT office. "IT for who, exactly?" she wondered aloud as Jim held the door to their destination for her.

Before either of them had the chance to consider that question further, Pam was accosted by a short, dark-haired, and very excited man. "Pam! Pam-pam-pam-pam-pam!"

She sighed. Behavior that would be seen as insane by most people was simply part of her daily life working for Michael. Truth be told, it didn't bother her nearly as much as it once had. She'd actually become pretty good at dealing with his foibles – Jim had recently told her that she could write a doctoral thesis on the care and feeding of Michael Scott. Pam conceded to herself that it would be pretty cool to be renowned as the world's leading expert in something.

The thought brought a subdued smile to her face. "What's up, Michael?"

"We have a new receptionist."

Pam turned toward her old desk to see an extremely attractive, mildly terrified blonde woman standing behind it. Her smile grew slightly at the thought of what the woman's first few minutes in her new job had likely entailed. She quickly endeavored to give the new employee some breathing room, which would hopefully keep Michael from scaring her off completely. "I see that. Tell you what – why don't I show her how everything works back there, and you get the Party Planning Committee started on welcoming her." Michael nodded and walked quickly across the office looking for Kelly, customer service representative and current holder of the dreaded PPC chairmanship. Pam saw Jim smile her an unspoken congratulation for another successful handling of the branch manager and turned to greet the new receptionist.

"Thanks." The blonde spoke first.

"Yeah, Michael can be a little overwhelming at first. He's really a sweetheart once you get to know him, though. And he's actually toned it down quite a bit since I started." Pam chuckled at the other woman's shocked look. "I'm Pam Beesly."

"I picked up the first name from the little outburst at the door," smiled the other woman. "Sarah Wilkinson."

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Sarah," Pam said, offering the blonde a handshake. "And please, let me be the first to congratulate you on your role as the gatekeeper of the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin Paper."

"The what?"

"You answer the phone and watch the door, right? A receptionist actually has a surprising amount of influence." The two women matched grins as Pam continued. "All this power was mine once, but the pressure got to be too much for me after five years."

"So you took a step backward into…" Sarah prompted.

"Sales. An indirect step, actually, by way of the Michael Scott Paper Company." Seeing the question in Sarah's eyes, Pam pressed on. "But that's a long story, and it's a little heavy for first-day talk. Let's get you up to speed on the phone system."

As Sarah and Pam took positions behind the desk, the main office door opened once again, revealing a tall, curly-headed man. He walked toward the desk and introduced himself.

"Hi, I'm Charles Barton, the new IT supervisor for the building."

"Pleasure to meet you, Charles. I'm Pam, and this is Sarah."

"The pleasure is all mine, I can assure you." The man's eyes appeared to linger on Sarah as he said that, and Pam thought she detected a hint of a blush from the new receptionist. "And please, call me Chuck."

"Chuck it is. What can we do for you?" Pam asked.

"Well, I'm supposed to meet with all of the managers in the building today," he explained. "Could you point me toward Michael Scott?"

Glancing over to confirm that Michael had finished making party recommendations to Kelly, Pam indicated his office. "Right in there."

Chuck smiled his thanks and headed for his meeting with the paper company's eccentric branch manager. Pam resumed her explanation of the phone system. Sarah seemed to catch on quickly, despite the fact that her eyes kept wandering toward Michael's window.

* * *

"Honey, I think Sarah might be interested in the IT guy."

Jim looked up from his expense report, just as glad for the distraction as always. "Yeah?"

"Maybe we could set them up – offer to show them around town, turn it into a double date," Pam continued.

"Seriously?" Jim was taken aback by his fiancée's uncharacteristic meddling. "You're not usually one to play matchmaker."

"Well, she seems sweet," Pam replied. "Plus, it'd be nice if there was something in this building to keep a receptionist around so she doesn't storm out like Erin did when Michael fake-fired her."

"You just don't want to take the chance of having to move back behind that desk," Jim accused.

Pam's response was cut off as Michael emerged from his office. "Jim, would you mind introducing Chuck to everyone?"

"Ask him," Pam whispered insistently.

* * *

"Dunder Mifflin, this is Sarah."

"Hi, Sarah, it's the new IT manager in the building. Would you like to have a little fun this evening?"

"Umm, what kind?" Sarah recognized Chuck's tone of voice. It usually meant he was up to no good.

"Pam's fiancé Jim offered to ask if you'd be interested in going out with me."

"So…"

"He and Pam would be joining us on a double date. And they don't think we know each other."

"Ahh." Sarah had to bite her lip to keep from smiling.

* * *

Dinner had gone well, despite the unavailability of Sarah's first choice. Chili's had gone through two managers and a dozen hostesses, but they still remembered Pam well enough to keep her out of the restaurant. Still, the local Chinese place had done good work this evening. After the meal, the four had agreed that the exotic Scranton nightlife would be a little over-taxing for a first date, deciding instead to retire to Jim and Pam's house.

As he entered the living room, Chuck's eyes immediately gravitated to a fairly well-stocked game cupboard. Focusing on one particular option, those eyes took on a mischievous gleam.

"Hey, you guys have the newlywed game!"

Jim smiled. "I don't mean to brag, but we're unbeaten in that one."

"Oh really," Chuck responded. "Care to give it a go?"

"Come on, that's hardly fair," Pam protested. "We've known each other for years, and these two just met."

"That's all right," Sarah said with an innocent smile. "It'd be a good way for us to get to know each other, even if we can't keep up with you two."

Pam shrugged. "Okay then. Game on." The miniature whiteboards were handed out, and Chuck drew the first card and noted his answer.

"Worst job."

Sarah looked pensive. "Well, you're in IT, so probably something with computers… maybe, like, a Buy More?"

Chuck smiled as he flipped his board over, revealing the words 'Nerd Herder at Buy More.' "Your turn," he said, passing the deck of cards to Jim.

"Favorite sport."

Pam grinned. "Easy. Basketball."

Jim nodded as he displayed the correct answer. Sarah was up next.

"Worst party you've ever attended."

Chuck stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Well, this is kind of a shot in the dark, but a lot of people are pretty miserable at high school reunions…"

Sarah's board proclaimed "10-year high school reunion" to be the proper response.

"All right, what was so bad about your reunion?" Pam inquired.

"Well, I ran into an old nemesis, and we kind of had a fight."

"Like an argument?"

"At first…" Sarah temporized.

Pam blinked as she drew her card. "Intense. All right… worst first date." She caught Jim's guilty smile. In doing that, she missed Chuck and Sarah grinning at each other.

"Well, Roy took you to a high school hockey game, right?"

"And left me there." Pam grimaced slightly as she confirmed Jim's answer. "Next."

"Most hated person," Chuck read.

Sarah studied him carefully. Of course, she remembered his original answer to the question, but Bryce had done a lot to redeem himself. She considered the possibility that Chuck would sneak Beckman's name onto the board, and try to cover up her real position in explaining his answer. But that would pose an unnecessary risk to their cover; for all they knew, their new coworkers might know the name of the NSA's director.

"Well, I know you worked at a Buy More… I've done some retail work myself, and I generally found the assistant manager to be the biggest jerk in the place."

"Emmett Milbarge, Buy More Ass Man," the whiteboard responded. Sarah raised a scolding eyebrow. "What?" Chuck asked playfully. "There's not a lot of room on this thing, I had to abbreviate somewhere."

Jim drew the next card. "Favorite romantic location."

Pam's smile threatened to split her face in half. "The Fairview gas station, not quite halfway from Scranton to New York."

Chuck and Sarah sat in confused silence after reading those exact words from Jim's board. Jim's smile matched Pam's as she explained. "It's where he proposed."

"You proposed at a gas station?" Sarah asked in amazement.

Jim nodded. "Bit of a long story for the middle of the game. But yes." Noting the incredulous looks from across the room, he shrugged. "Hey, it seems to have worked…"

Sarah conceded the point by drawing the next card. "Favorite pizza topping."

Chuck smiled. "Someone who looks like you probably tries to be healthy even when eating pizza." Sarah rewarded him with the blush he'd been hoping for. "Let's take a shot with… vegetarian, no olives."

Sarah high-fived him. Jim raised his eyebrows at Pam, getting a silent _wow_ in response as she picked her category. "Strangest wedding you've attended."

Jim winced slightly. "Gotta be Phyllis and Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration." Pam nodded.

"What was strange about it?" asked Chuck.

"Well, I'd been engaged to this guy Roy for a while."

"Roy from the high school hockey game?" Sarah interjected, resulting in a smirk from Jim.

"Yeah, that's him," Pam confirmed. "Anyway, I called it off, but we'd already made all the plans. And Phyllis used them."

"She had your wedding?" Chuck clarified.

"Pretty much."

"Don't forget Michael's crazy speech at the reception," Jim added.

"Yeah, it was a pretty surreal day."

"Sounds that way," Chuck commented as he drew again. "Favorite movie."

Sarah initially managed to suppress a broad grin, but it spread gradually across her face as she formulated her guess. "I'm getting kind of a sci-fi vibe from this area of the room," she said, gesturing toward Chuck. "Maybe not the big blockbusters, though. You said your dad wasn't around much when you were younger, so maybe something you could have shared with him from an early age… something like, oh, Tron, maybe?"

Jim gave her a skeptical look that seemed to say that their beginners' luck was finally running thin. Pam just looked lost.

Chuck slowly rotated his whiteboard to reveal his answer: TRON.

Jim leapt out of his chair. "No way! There is just… no way."

Chuck and Sarah burst out laughing. Pam's confused look now had company.

"We… we're so… we're sorry," Chuck managed to force out between laughs. Finally, Sarah composed herself enough to explain.

"We've actually been dating for two years. We moved here together from California… anyway, when Jim offered to set us up together, well, we couldn't resist. And then with the newlywed game, it just worked out better than I could possibly have imagined." She slipped into another fit of giggles.

Jim and Pam stared at the other couple in slack-jawed amazement. Finally, smiles crept across their faces.

"Wow." Pam was the first of the pair who regained the power of speech. "That was impressive. The psychological reasoning for the favorite movie… that was nice."

Sarah chuckled. "He has a giant poster for it in his bedroom."

"Our bedroom now, sweetie," Chuck corrected.

"You're letting him keep it?" asked Pam.

"What can I say? He's very convincing." Sarah's response resulted in the raising of the room's other three sets of eyebrows.

"Seriously, guys, well played," Jim complimented.

"You know, honey, I think you may have a challenger for the title of office prankster," Pam commented.

"Actually, that gives me an idea," Jim mused. "I already had this one in mind, but with the assistance of the new building IT supervisor, maybe we could take it to the next level."

* * *

"This is IT, Charles speaking. What can I do for you this morning, Mr. Bernard?"

"Yes, hello. My computer seems to be pulling up someone else's email."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I'll be right over to take a look, Mr. Bernard."

"My name is Dwight Schrute. Why are you calling me Mr. Bernard?"

"My apologies, sir. My caller ID function identified you as Andrew Bernard."

"I am not Andy Bernard!"

"Are you certain? I've always found caller ID very reliable."

"Why wouldn't I know my own name?"

"It's not my job to pry into your personal issues, sir."

"Just get over here!"

"And where is your office located, Mr. Bernard?"

"Dunder Mifflin."

"I'll be there as soon as I can."

Chuck hung up with a grin and left his office. As he opened the door of the paper supplier, the end of a ranting sentence drifted through the entryway: "misappropriation of company property!"

"I'm pretty sure all of our desks have exactly the same company property in them," responded Pam's voice. Chuck came around the corner to discover a medium-grade madhouse surrounding Dwight's desk – or what had once been Dwight's desk. Now, it was almost an exact copy of Andy's. The one difference was that Jim had managed to acquire an Andy bobblehead to replace Dwight's miniature of himself.

"Hello, I'm looking for Andrew Bernard," Chuck said. "I hear he's having some trouble accessing his email."

"No… my email is fine, Hambone." Andy had seen Chuck eating a ham sandwich the day before. He was not famously imaginative in his nicknames.

"I'm the one having trouble with my email!" Dwight spat.

"All right, what can I do for you, Mr. Bernard?" Chuck asked genially.

"My name is Dwight Schrute! I told you that on the phone."

"That's not what it says on your nameplate," Chuck replied truthfully. He turned to Jim for clarification. "Does this man often lose track of his identity?"

Jim nodded seriously. "It's been known to happen before."

"He spent years declaring himself the Assistant Regional Manager," Pam chipped in.

Chuck nodded sagely. "And who is the real Assistant Regional Manager?"

"There is no such position," Jim replied.

"Oh dear. This seems like a very serious situation. Has he sought professional help?"

"I do not need professional help! My name is really Dwight Schrute! Look!" He delicately removed a folded piece of paper from his pocket. It was his birth certificate.

"Hmm." Chuck pondered the new information. "How do we know this is yours? It's not a photo ID."

"What good would that do?" Dwight demanded. "The picture would look nothing like me."

"So you admit that this isn't yours?" Chuck pressed.

"Of course not, idiot," Dwight sneered. "I just look different now than when I was a baby."

Chuck paused to consider that argument before nodding in acceptance. "Either way, I'll still need photographic proof that you are who you claim to be, or I can't give you access to Dwight Schrute's email."

"Fine! Let me get my driver's license from my car." Dwight stormed out of the office.

After exchanging confused looks, Chuck and Jim set to work. Chuck took Dwight's chair and returned his email account information to its original state, while Jim pulled the box containing Dwight's original desk contents out from under his desk and removed Andy's duplicate possessions. They finished just as Dwight returned to the office, waving his license triumphantly.

"See? This is my picture on an ID for Dwight Schrute," he proclaimed.

"Very well," Chuck conceded. "I think what has happened here is that your computer mistook you for Andy Bernard and decided to log you into his account. To keep this from happening again, I'll ask you to be very, very careful not to act like Mr. Bernard in any way – behave exactly opposite to him if at all possible."

"I generally do that anyway," Dwight mused. "I'm not sure what went wrong this time."

"Just make sure that it doesn't happen again. It was very difficult to convince your computer of your true identity this time. I fear next time, it will be impossible," Chuck warned.

Dwight nodded seriously. "I've always worried that the machines would rebel some day."

"Well, if we work together, we can keep that from happening. So please, be vigilant." The two men shook hands. "Just out of curiosity, why do you keep your driver's license in your car?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Dwight asked. "That's the only place where I need permission to drive."

Chuck grinned. "Fair enough."

* * *

Jim stopped by the IT office with his lunch. "Nice work in there, Hambone."

Chuck grimaced. "Is he really going to keep calling me that?"

"I've been Big Tuna ever since the one day I had the stuff for lunch," Jim answered balefully. "Most of three years now."

"Wow." Chuck shook his head. "You've got some interesting coworkers in there."

"No kidding. Seriously, though, that was terrific. Convincing Dwight that his computer had mistaken him for someone else? That may be the best prank I've ever been a part of." Jim grinned as he remembered his other successes. "It's right up there with turning him into Pavlov's Dog."

Chuck coughed, scattering droplets of grape soda across his desk. "Really?"

"Yeah, that was a good day. Anyway, thanks for the help. I owe you one."

"Well, if you're serious about that, there is something I could use a hand with. What are you and Pam doing after work today?"


	3. Affectation

A/N: Sorry for the lengthy delay. The initial draft of the chapter had a pretty significant flaw... basically, it kind of sucked. Fortunately, my insightful betas, KathGrangerPotter and sgafan360, both called me on it, so it's been modified to the hopefully less-crappy version you'll find below.

My policy, in regard to NBC, which was adopted at an early stage of the existence of that network, nevertheless remains the same, which is, not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its shows. Like, say, Chuck or the Office.

* * *

Chapter 3: Affectation

"So what did you think?"

Sarah hesitated. The movie had been Chuck's choice, so she was a little reluctant to criticize it too harshly. She glanced up at him and was surprised to find a knowing smile on his face.

"Because I thought it kind of sucked," Chuck continued.

Sighing in relief, Sarah willingly agreed.

"So does someone else get to pick next time?" Jim asked.

"Well, it'd be someone else's turn anyway," Chuck replied.

"Yeah, but I'm not sure simply passing the choice off to the next person is a severe enough punishment," Pam observed. "I think maybe Chuck goes on movie picking probation for a while."

"Normally I'd complain, but honestly, after that waste of two hours, it seems like a fair punishment," Chuck admitted ruefully.

"Seriously, Sarah, how did a guy who picks such horrible entertainment manage to snag you?" Jim teased.

"Hmm…" Sarah mused. "Smart, funny, good-looking and sweet on the one hand… questionable taste in movies on the other. It is a tough call."

"Hey! You usually like my choices," Chuck objected.

Sarah grinned. "That's true – this one may have just been an aberration. I guess I'll stick with you for a little longer, then."

Chuck slipped his hand into Sarah's, and their linked fingers swung back and forth lazily as they emerged from the theater. Suddenly, Chuck stopped. Sarah's momentum kept her moving, but Chuck's grip on her hand swung her around to face him. She giggled softly.

"Chuck, what are you…" She cut off her sentence with a gasp as Chuck went down to one knee and smiled adorably up at her.

"Sarah, I…" He paused, as though looking for the right words. "I have to tie my shoe."

After taking a moment to catch her breath, Sarah rolled her eyes and turned to walk away. Pam took advantage of her position just in front of Jim and elbowed him in the stomach. "You told him to do that, didn't you?"

Hunching over slightly to absorb the blow, Jim wrapped his arms around Pam's waist and pulled her back toward him. "Wait for it," he murmured huskily, eliciting a shiver from his fiancée.

Sarah made it about a step and a half before realizing that Chuck's fingers were still laced through hers. She turned back intending to ask him to teach her how he tied his shoes with one hand, and found herself staring at a diamond ring.

"Sarah, will you marry me?" Chuck looked up to gauge her response. Her eyes were the size of car headlights. She didn't say anything.

Chuck stood back up and embraced her. He carefully turned so that Jim and Pam couldn't see either of their faces.

"Chuck, there are people here," Sarah murmured.

"And?"

"And you realize that means I have to say yes to preserve our cover, right?" she whispered.

"The thought did occur to me," Chuck answered simply.

She sighed. "Give me the ring."

"Sarah…"

"Give me the damn ring. We have to sell it for the cover, right?" Sarah practically spat the word "cover."

"Are you…"

"We'll talk about it later. Trust me." As they broke off their hug, Sarah plastered on a brilliant fake smile and leaned up for a quick kiss. She then slid on the ring and ran toward Pam for a hug. Jim walked over to Chuck and offered a handshake.

"Congrats, man."

"Yeah. Thanks for your help setting up the date," Chuck replied. He managed a strained smile. For the cover.

* * *

The drive back to Chuck and Sarah's apartment had been awkward, passing predominantly in silence. Sarah hadn't been kidding about maintaining the cover – she'd given every appearance of bliss, but in reality, her hand hung limply in Chuck's, and her head leaned against the back seat millimeters away from actual contact with his shoulder. The couples had agreed to meet at Jim and Pam's for a celebratory dessert later in the evening as Chuck and Sarah left the car. As soon as the other couple was gone, Sarah had disappeared into the building. Chuck's attempts to catch up had been futile until he reached the living room, where Sarah sat on the couch with a scowl.

"Sarah, I'm sorry, all right?" he said pleadingly.

"What are you sorry about, Chuck?" she snapped back.

"I'm sorry for… proposing. I shouldn't have pushed you. If you're not ready…"

Sarah snorted derisively. "You have no idea why I'm mad, do you?"

Chuck looked guilty, hesitating before saying, "I guess not."

"Chuck, we had a cover relationship for two years. We spent time together for the cover, for two years. And I was pretty happy with that. But you, you were always pushing to make things real. So when we got the opportunity, I decided to try it your way. And you know what? You were absolutely right. Being with you the past few months has been amazing, far better than what we had before."

Chuck smiled tentatively. "I feel the same way."

"I know you do. Which is why I can't believe you thought it'd be a good idea to bring back the cover!"

The smile quickly disappeared. "Sarah… it doesn't have to be just for the cover."

She laughed bitterly. "That sounds familiar. Probably because it's the same crap line I fed you for far too long. So let me put this as plainly as possible, Chuck. I don't want a proposal that's not 'just' for the cover. I don't want anything about our relationship to be even remotely associated with the idea of cover, ever again. But since you seem to disagree, you're getting Cover Sarah for a while." She stalked angrily into the bedroom.

"Sarah, wait!" Chuck cried plaintively.

"Cover Sarah is taking a nap, Chuck. She'll need plenty of energy for all the fake smiling she has scheduled for tonight."

Chuck sighed, knowing there was nothing more he could do for the moment. Resigned to his fate, he headed for his "office," the room where they stashed his Orion gear. It was also where he received the Daily Intersect Report, a practice Beckman had introduced with the new download. It was a compilation of various surveillance photos and briefings that Chuck was to go over in hopes of a flash. The report for this particular day was relatively short, so Chuck decided to finish it up before attending what seemed certain to be the least enjoyable celebratory gathering of his life.

"Huh," he muttered. "We'd gotten quite a bit of good stuff from that Detroit team. That's too bad." He sighed as he realized that three people had died, and his immediate reaction had been regret for the loss of the intelligence they'd provided. Chuck shook his head. Beckman was having way too much influence on him.

Turning the page, he found a brief report out of Atlanta. "Now what on Earth could have spurred them to declare that team unreliable? They've been flawless." He furrowed his brow and pulled out a notebook. Something didn't quite seem right.

* * *

"So Chuck and Sarah are engaged." Pam cringed slightly at her own comment, but stating the obvious was often a good way to start a conversation.

"Yeah. Hard to imagine they just met two days ago," Jim replied with a laugh. "They seem really good together."

"Yeah…"

"You don't think so?" he queried.

"I'm not sure," she answered hesitantly. "I mean, they fooled us into thinking they didn't know each other pretty easily."

"Yeah, but they couldn't have pulled that off without really knowing each other very well."

"I guess."

Jim studied his fiancée carefully. "There's something else you're not saying."

Pam conceded. "Okay, they had that long hug after he proposed."

"I can see how you'd find that suspicious," he teased.

She shot him an irritated look. "I happened to glance at one of the Coming Soon posters in the middle of that, and saw their reflections. It looked like they were whispering back and forth. And Sarah looked mad."

"You could see all that in the poster for the Transformers sequel?"

"It was the next Harry Potter, I think… and I saw enough of it. Plus, it's not just the conversation they had," she continued. "They didn't say two words on the drive back – Sarah took a nap. Not exactly what you'd expect from someone who's excited about her engagement. I certainly didn't sleep for a while after you proposed."

"Well you had to survive the trip back to New York," Jim countered. Pam glared at him. "She has had a lot going on lately, with the move and the new job. Maybe she was tired."

Pam blew past his rationalization. "And who plans a proposal in a movie theater parking lot? I mean, I know you did it at a gas station, but that was spontaneous, and the romance came from the fact that we were living two hours apart at the time. They're together every day – he couldn't find a more intimate location?"

"What makes you think it wasn't spontaneous?" Jim challenged.

"You knew it was coming," Pam pointed out.

Jim winced. "Admittedly, that's a little weird. But I'm not totally convinced."

"Don't believe me? Let's watch them tonight."

He shrugged resignedly. "Fine."

* * *

Chuck had expected the quiet drive to Jim and Pam's house. He had not expected Sarah's first words since chewing him out to be a quietly muttered, "That house has tinted windows."

"What?" He was a little nervous about further irritating her, but Sarah's apparently irrelevant comment screamed for clarification.

"I knew something bothered me about the house next to Jim and Pam's when we were over here the other day," she explained in a surprisingly placid voice. "The windows are tinted. Someone in there is a little paranoid."

Chuck looked over at the house in question. A few seconds later, he replied in a shaky voice. "The glass isn't just tinted – it's bulletproof."

"What?" Sarah demanded. "How did you recognize bulletproof glass?"

"I didn't," Chuck stammered. "It's labeled in the blueprints."

Sarah's face took on a concerned look. "Chuck, did you flash on that house?"

"On the address, yeah. Aside from the secured windows, it also has a ton of cameras monitoring the outside, along with IR sensors."

"That's an awful lot of security. Any idea what it's for?"

He nodded. "The guy who lives there, his name is Robert Grich. He's a Fulcrum Elder."


	4. Vacation

A/N: Since it took so long to get the last chapter up, I figured I'd rush production on this one. Of course, the fact that my excellent betas, KathGrangerPotter and sgafan360, didn't feel the need to slap me around as much about this chapter also helped.

A clarifying note: Remember that this jumps off _before_ the Office Season 5 finale, so all developments starting with that episode have not occurred. One big one in particular.

Housekeeping: If you're interested, I've posted a poll on my profile asking what you'd like to see me write next. It'll have no impact on this story at all, but if you're enjoying this one and would like some influence over what else you get to read, I'd love to see your votes.

To the people who own awesome television shows like Chuck and the Office, our last best hope in an age where reality television and Jay Leno have far outpaced scripted entertainment, I renew my pledge of not owning your stuff.

* * *

Chapter 4: Vacation

Three hours after discovering that Jim and Pam's neighbor was a Fulcrum Elder, Chuck had yet to recover from the resulting daze. Sarah had immediately called Casey, informed him of the situation, and asked him to set up a video conference with Beckman later in the evening. Chuck had wanted to go home right away, but Sarah had reminded him that neither of them had anything resembling a plausible work-related excuse, and that they'd agreed to come over barely an hour before. The chances of damaging their cover by backing out were far too high. They'd have to act as normal as possible and get through the evening.

Chuck had never been so grateful for Cover Sarah's presence. She and Pam had spent most of the evening talking excitedly about each other's wedding plans, leaving Jim and Chuck barely able to slip a word into the conversation. Which was good, because hanging out next door to a high-ranking member of a domestic terrorist group had resulted in Chuck completely freaking out.

He had finally calmed down to some extent when they'd met Casey back at their apartment. The two agents had immediately withdrawn to the kitchen to discuss the situation. After retreating briefly to his office to record the full details of his flash, Chuck allowed himself to decompress on the living room couch. Unfortunately, that state of affairs hadn't lasted long.

"Well done, team. We've been looking for Mr. Grich for a very long time," said the face of General Beckman as it appeared on the television in the living room. Sarah and Casey hurried in to join Chuck for the briefing.

"How should we proceed from this point, General?" asked Sarah.

"I will be placing an FBI SWAT team under Colonel Casey's direct supervision," Beckman announced. "With their help, you will apprehend Grich, along with any other Fulcrum personnel in the area, and bring them to the nearest secure detention facility for interrogation."

"And when should all this be accomplished?"

"As soon as your team has developed a plan that everyone is comfortable with, Agent Walker," Beckman replied dryly.

Sarah nodded, and appeared to be satisfied. Chuck was not.

"General, Grich lives next door to two people who work closely with Sarah at her cover job. Isn't it likely that they'll notice if she's involved in a major operation next to their house?"

The NSA director paused to consider that. "Agent Walker, you and Mr. Bartowski should ensure that your coworkers will not identify you as part of the mission. Do whatever you have to." The screen abruptly went black.

"All right, Bartowski, I need all the information you have on the house." Chuck nodded and left the room. "Walker, you up for a late night planning session?"

"I trust you to handle the tactical aspects of the mission, Casey," Sarah answered. "Right now, I need to figure out what we're going to do with Jim and Pam."

Casey lifted a bemused eyebrow. "What's hard about that? You two head over there tomorrow night and spike their drinks, we do the takedown while they're out."

Sarah glared at her partner. "That would keep them from picking us out as part of the mission, but tranquilizing two of our coworkers wouldn't exactly be good for our long-term cover. Which demonstrates why I need to talk to Chuck about this instead of you."

Sarah's preferred conversation partner returned to the room at that moment, carrying a sketched blueprint of the house that featured every available piece of information about its security systems. He handed it to the NSA agent. "Let me know if you need anything else, Casey."

Casey studied the plans briefly. "This should be enough, I think. It's a one-story house, right?" Seeing Sarah's nod, he stepped toward the door. "Then I'll bid you two lovebirds goodnight."

Sarah turned to Chuck. "We need to figure out how to deal with Jim and Pam."

Chuck gave her a strange look. "Okay…"

"It's not an easy problem, Chuck," she said evenly. "We have to keep them from seeing the takedown without giving them any hint that we're trying to keep them from seeing anything."

"Yeah, I got all of that." Seeing that she wasn't planning to acknowledge the need to talk about anything else, Chuck shrugged. "Okay, so we need them out of the house long enough for us to pull this off. Why don't we invite them to New York for the weekend?"

Sarah pondered the idea. "That could work – we slip back here on, say, Saturday night, do the job, and they're none the wiser."

"Won't Beckman want us around after the mission, though? Interrogation and paperwork and all that?"

"Good point," she conceded. "So we leave New York Saturday night, and leave a note at the hotel desk saying that someone died, or is having a baby, or something, and we had to go. That gives us our excuse to be away from the apartment on Sunday too."

"That should do it then, at least as long as they accept the invitation. Which I don't expect to be a huge problem."

Sarah nodded her agreement and began walking toward the bedroom.

"Sarah, wait… isn't there anything else we should discuss?"

She kept walking. "Chuck, I really don't want to talk about this tonight."

Chuck stood to pursue her. "I understand that, but will you at least listen about it?"

Sarah glanced back at him and sighed. He was giving her his endearing sad look, which meant her options were limited: either give in now, or give in after a few minutes. "Fine," she huffed.

Chuck nervously drew a deep breath. "Look, I'm really really sorry that I brought the cover back into things. That's not what I wanted to do at all. You have no idea how great it's been, being with you. It's like a dream." He paused, hoping for a response that didn't come. "I guess… part of me keeps expecting to wake up, or is afraid that one day you'll figure out how much better you can do. And that part of me really wanted to hear you say 'yes' to that particular question, even if it wasn't real."

She still said nothing, just giving Chuck a sad look of her own.

"I know I screwed up. It won't happen again. I mean, I'll probably screw up again. But not in this particular way. I'm really sorry. Please forgive me?"

Sarah rolled her eyes slightly. "Come here."

Chuck smiled nervously as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him toward her… and then recoiled as she slapped him on the back of the head. "Hey!"

She grabbed his shirt and tugged him down threateningly. "You are never to doubt my feelings for you again. Understand?"

"Yes," he squeaked.

"And you are never to expect someone better for me to come along," she continued. "Because unless you make a habit of pulling crap like this, that is not going to happen. Understand?"

"Yes."

She released his shirt and eyed him warily. "Do you really understand that, or are you just saying you do so I won't kill you?"

Chuck grinned ruefully. "I'm still not quite sure why you ended up with me. But I trust you."

Sarah contemplated that response before giving a single decisive nod. "Fair enough."

"So…"

"So I'm still mad at you, and you're on the couch, probably for a few days. But you don't have to sleep in body armor."

Chuck nodded solemnly and retrieved his pillow and a blanket. As he prepared for bed, he jumped upon hearing a final comment drift through the bedroom doorway.

"Oh, and in case you're wondering, I expect a real proposal at some point."

* * *

"So, a weekend in New York. What do you think?"

Jim shrugged. "We don't have anything going on, and they're paying for most of it. They're a fun couple. Sounds like a good time."

"Plus, it's a chance to find out more about our mysterious new acquaintances," Pam suggested.

Jim chuckled lightly. "All right, they seemed a little off last night. But they just got engaged. I know I was out of it after proposing to you."

"Still don't believe me? What's it going to take to convince you?" she challenged.

He shook his head bemusedly. "We'll see how the weekend goes."

* * *

Beckman had approved the general structure of the plan to capture Robert Grich, leaving Casey and the SWAT team to refine the specific tactical approach. Meanwhile, Chuck and Sarah had packed up and headed for New York immediately after work on Friday. They'd recommended that Jim and Pam drive separately, in case the couples decided to split up during the weekend.

Friday night had been occupied by dinner and dancing. The biggest surprise was the fact that Pam had kicked off the dancing portion of the festivities by asking Chuck. Sarah and Jim had quickly followed. A few songs later, the four friends had switched back to their normal couplings, which remained intact for the remainder of the evening.

Most of Saturday was spent sightseeing. It was Chuck's first visit to New York, and Sarah's first unclassified one, so the Scranton natives led the tour. They'd ended up at a bar near their hotel. Sarah and Chuck departed at a relatively early 11:00, claiming exhaustion from the tour, although Jim and Pam suspected other, more intimate reasons behind their desire to return to the hotel room. They'd followed the same path soon after, and for the same reasons.

An hour and a half (and several reasons) later, Jim and Pam relaxed contentedly in their bed. Pam rolled over to face her fiancé. "I wonder what Chuck and Sarah are up to."

Jim smiled. "I imagine they're probably done by now."

"If that's why they left in the first place…" she said, her voice taking on a suggestive lilt.

"You're still on this, aren't you?"

"Come on, just humor me for one more night and I'll let it drop. I promise," Pam pleaded.

Jim wished, not for the first time, that he could develop the capability to stand up to Pam someday. But as she stood from the bed and began searching the room for her clothes, he realized that today had no chance of being that day. "Fine. What do we do?"

"I'll go down the hall and wait outside their room. You call the room phone," she instructed as she pulled on her shirt. "I should be able to hear what happens."

"It's one in the morning!" Jim objected.

"So the worst case scenario is that they lose a little sleep."

"Them and everyone else in this hallway." Pam shot him a look, and he sighed his surrender. "Okay."

"I'll be in position in two minutes." She giggled slightly and left the room.

Two minutes later, Jim dialed the phone. He waited through several rings, with nobody answering. Pam returned to the room shortly after the ringing stopped.

"Nothing. No reaction at all," she proclaimed.

"So maybe they're deep sleepers," Jim guessed.

That earned him a skeptical look. "Or maybe they're not in there."

"Why wouldn't they be in there?"

Pam rolled her eyes. "Why would he plan a proposal in a movie theater parking lot?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "So what's our next step, Detective Beesly?"

"Knock on the door."

"If they didn't answer the phone…"

Pam interrupted. "Then they probably won't answer a knock, I know. But there's a third step."

"And what on Earth would that be?"

A wicked grin creased Pam's features. "This."

"A room key?" Jim queried.

"Chuck's," she clarified. "I swiped it while we were dancing."

"Well aren't you just a naughty girl," he teased.

Her smile grew. "I think we've already established that tonight. Shall we?"

"What the heck. Let's break into someone else's hotel room." Jim and Pam walked toward the door.

_Knock knock knock._

"Chuck? Sarah? You guys awake?" Jim called softly.

Pam listened for a moment. "I don't hear anything." She pulled out the key card and slid it into place. Jim quietly opened the door and peeked into the room.

"They're gone. Guess you were right."

Pam's eyes held a concerned look as they scanned over the room. "Their suitcases are gone, too. I think they've left entirely."

"That doesn't make sense," Jim objected. "Why would they leave without telling us?"

"Come on." Pam tugged Jim out of the room. "Let's go check with the front desk."

The clerk working the night shift was grateful for the diversion. "342? Yes, that couple checked out about an hour ago. You must be the people they left this note for."

Pam practically lunged across the counter grabbing the sheet of paper. "Jim and Pam, we just heard that Sarah's dad had a heart attack. We're heading back to Scranton to wait for more news and to decide whether we need to fly out to see him or not. Sorry we left without telling you, but we didn't want to bother you in the middle of the night. Feel free to enjoy the rest of the weekend, it's still on us. Hugs, Chuck and Sarah."

Jim nodded knowingly. "Parental health problems. How nefarious."

Pam looked guilty. "We should go. They could probably use to have friends around."

"And how do you plan to explain our early arrival?" Jim queried.

"We called and knocked, didn't get an answer, and went to the front desk to check on them. Which is exactly what happened," she replied with a threatening glare.

Jim laughed. "All right. We'll pack up and drive back now, get a little sleep, and go see them first thing in the morning."

* * *

"So what's the plan, Casey?" Chuck asked as he hopped out of the car with far too much exuberance for someone who'd just finished a two-hour drive at 2:30 in the morning.

Casey grimaced. "God, you're excitable. Walker, did you inject him with espresso or something?"

Sarah chuckled. "He's just happy to get away from my lecture about the necessity of maintaining hotel key card security."

Chuck glared irritably at her. "No, I'm just anxious to get this over with. The plan?"

"The SWAT team and I approach the house from the rear. You and Walker sit out front in a van. Sound familiar?" Casey asked.

"Simple enough, if you're planning to be gunned down before entering the house," Chuck replied skeptically. "How are you planning on handling the surveillance?"

"What, did you lose daddy's secret decoder ring?" Casey prodded. "We don't keep you around here for your good looks, you know."

"Casey, the wrist computer can handle two, maybe three cameras at a time," Chuck explained patiently. "That place has something like ten, with a few lovely IR-sensing cherries on top."

"Well that would have been helpful information to have during our planning session, Bartowski!" Casey growled.

Chuck sighed. "We're taking a surveillance van, right?" Casey nodded. "Okay… give me an hour." He walked quickly into his small office and turned on the second gift Orion had left for him before disappearing – a laptop more powerful than anything available to the general public.

"What are you doing, Bartowski?" Casey asked from the doorway.

"Saving your ass, Colonel – or cranking out the necessary code to defeat the surveillance on the house. Whichever you prefer."

"So they won't know we're coming?" the NSA officer pressed.

"Not only that, but we'll have the unaltered feeds from the devices. Thanks to the heat sensors, I should be able to give you rough locations for all of the enemy personnel inside the house." Chuck turned briefly to look impassively at his handler. "And yes, they won't know we're coming."

"And you'll have all of this done in an hour?" The gruff agent actually sounded impressed.

"If you stop bothering me." Chuck glanced up at the older man and decided that had been a bit harsh. "This thing has Dad's special algorithm development software. You give it a sample input before you start coding, it tells you what the output is from what you've written in real time. You tell it what kind of output you're looking for, it suggests modifications. It's pretty sweet." Looking up again, Chuck saw that the doorway was empty. He shrugged and went back to work.

* * *

Sarah slowed the van across the street from the house and shifted into park. She slid into the rear area as Chuck began the first stage of his program, recording a ten-minute sample of data from every sensor in the house. "Sarah?" he asked tentatively.

"Yes, Chuck?"

"We, uhh, we should start making out," he said.

"What?"

"I know you're still mad. But we're in an unmarked van across the street from the home of a Fulcrum elder, and his guards can keep an eye on us with the house's heat sensors. We need to give them a reason for us to be sitting here, at least for the next, oh, nine minutes and 20 seco-" Sarah's lips abruptly interrupted his explanation.

Nine minutes later, Chuck pulled back. "Where were you before we started?"

"Huh?" In her thoroughly-kissed state, Sarah took a moment to catch up to Chuck's line of thought.

"You need to get back to your original position so I can cut off the recording, otherwise there'll be a jump in the feed." She nodded and got as close to her original location as she could, and Chuck began executing the second stage of his code. He keyed the radio microphone. "Casey, the surveillance should be down. You're clear to move in."

* * *

The strike team moved cautiously through the back yard of the house behind the one in question. They climbed the fence between the yards one at a time, using a tree to screen themselves from view of the house, and moved silently toward the back door. Tracking their progress, Chuck waited until the ten law enforcement agents were in place, and quietly reported the status of the people in the house. "There's one man at the back door, three at the front. Two more further inside the house."

Casey watched as his team prepared the explosives that would blow the back door into the house. "Bartowski," he whispered, "the guy in the rear, is he patrolling?"

"Kinda, yeah, he's moving around a little."

Casey got a thumbs-up from the team's explosives specialist. "Let me know when he's directly behind the door."

"Any second… now! Go!"

The door immediately flew off of its hinges, crushing the guard against the kitchen wall. The team moved quickly through the door, securing the kitchen and the dining room. "Casey, the guards from the front, they're headed your way."

Casey held back a sarcastic response along the lines of, "Think they noticed the giant explosion?" and took a position behind the dining room table. The first guard into the room was rudely introduced to three rounds from the Colonel's submachine gun. Of course, Casey reflected, the first one is the easiest; after that, the other guys know where you are.

Casey's review of the house blueprints Chuck had reproduced from his flash indicated that the building was well-designed for making a last stand around an important person. There was only one route between any two points, making it impossible to outflank the defenders. But his team was very close to establishing control of both doors, and once they did that, there would be no escape for the house's occupants.

"Casey, the other two guys, they're on the move."

That didn't make much sense. "Toward us?"

"Uhh, no, it doesn't look like it. They're heading down some stairs, to a basement, I guess."

Chuck's floorplans hadn't included a basement – which meant Casey had no idea where the Fulcrum agents were heading. He glanced toward the kitchen and urgently waved his men forward. The first one to poke his head around the corner immediately drew fire. They were pinned down, and needed a way to shift the situation in their favor.

"Bartowski!" he demanded. "Where are the two guys in the front of the house?"

"They're around the corner from you."

Casey breathed deeply in a futile attempt to calm himself. "I knew _that_, moron. Where are they in the room?"

"I don't know, I'd have to… how long do we have?"

Casey swore quietly. "Not long, considering our main target seems to be heading for a basement we know nothing about." That didn't get a response, which Casey hoped meant Chuck was tapping away on his dad's magic laptop. "Walker, you better keep an eye on the front."

Chuck's voice returned to his ear. "Casey, Casey, I've got it. The first guy is directly behind the front door, about 6 feet away from it, looks like he's tucked into the front hall. The second guy, he's right up against the wall, about 5 feet away from the corner you guys are holding." Whatever Chuck had done had taken about a minute and a half.

Casey quickly removed two fragmentation grenades from his belt as he moved toward the corner of the wall, rolling the first along the baseboard for a short distance. Immediately after the ensuing explosion, he stepped quickly around the corner and fired half a dozen rounds into the body of the nearest guard, who had assumed a protective position in an effort to avoid the grenade. He then sprinted across the living room, dove behind a couch, and signaled the other agents to keep the remaining guard pinned in the front hall. Carefully avoiding the line of suppressive fire, he moved toward the guard's location. He knelt down and reached his pistol around the corner, firing three shots at roughly knee height. That earned him the rewarding sound of a body collapsing. He waved for the other agents to stop firing and advance through the rest of the house, then stepped around the corner and fired one more shot from his pistol.

"Nice work, Bartowski. How'd you pin down the locations like that?" Casey asked as he sprinted off to join the assault team.

"I, uh, triangulated the signals from multiple IR sensors, and overlaid the results with the blueprints to the house. Hey, you guys might want to hurry – the last two guys are under the front yard somewhere and-"

* * *

Chuck's advice cut off as the head of one of the two Fulcrum agents emerged from the front yard. Sarah cracked the van's sliding door open and waited for her shot, taking it after the man climbed completely into view. The shot impacted the man's right thigh, and Sarah quickly flew from the van, disarmed the gunman, and zip-tied his hands together. Then Chuck saw a second head pop up, and was hit by three seconds of incapacitating pictures and video clips representing a double flash.

The first set of data identified the new target as Robert Grich, Fulcrum Elder. The second drew an amazed shake of Chuck's head as he marveled once again at the unbelievable behavior of the new Intersect. He ejected the disc containing his triangulation code from the van's main computer, opened the sliding door all the way, and hurled the disc like a Frisbee toward the terrorist. The disc struck its target in the neck, dropping him to his knees. Chuck quickly followed the disc out of the car, rendering Grich unconscious with a kick to the back of the head.

Sarah looked over her shoulder and gave Chuck a grateful smile. Looking down at the man he'd subdued, her eyes widened slightly at the sight of his neck. Chuck shrugged. "Discus throwing."

The blond agent's smile grew bigger – and then quickly disappeared, replaced by a look of dismay. Chuck followed her line of sight across the yard. Its destination was the neighboring driveway, where Jim and Pam stood next to their car with thoroughly shocked looks on their faces. The four friends all seemed frozen, nobody having the slightest clue what to do next.

Their reverie was broken as Casey climbed from the hole in the yard. He took in the scene with bulging eyes, dropping the gun he'd been wielding in apparent shock. Recovering quickly, he drew another weapon from its holster. Ignoring Chuck's desperate "Casey, no!" he fired twice.

Chuck and Sarah watched in horror as Jim and Pam's bodies slumped to the ground.


	5. Initiation

A/N: Thanks once again to KathGrangerPotter and sgafan360 for their invaluable assistance on this chapter.

Housekeeping note - there's a new poll up on my profile asking which story ideas you'd like me to focus on for when this one is finished. So if you care about that, you should vote in it.

With malice toward none, with charity toward all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in. And let's do that even though none of us will make any money from it, because I don't own Chuck or the Office.

* * *

Chapter 5: Initiation

"Casey, I can't believe you did that!" Chuck shouted.

"Did what, save your cover's ass?" Casey rejoined. "It's not my fault you and Walker couldn't keep those two in New York."

"So you SHOT THEM?" Chuck demanded.

Casey snorted. "Sorry to have twisted your panties, Bartowski, but haven't you figured out by now that the mission takes priority in these situations?"

Chuck refused to back down. "Remind me again when our mission became gunning down innocent people!"

"Our mission is protecting your identity, numb nuts," Casey replied irritably. "I did what I had to. And for God's sake, quit with the drama – since when are people 'gunned down' by tranq darts?"

Casey returned to silently watching the feeds of the four occupied interrogation rooms, and Chuck continued to fume quietly until Sarah entered the room. "Beckman says that standard procedure is to relocate them," she reported.

Chuck grimaced. "Great, another pair of lives ruined by yours truly." He dropped his head into his hands.

"Not necessarily," Sarah responded. "That's normal procedure. But since we've been such an effective team, Beckman's letting us decide how to handle the situation."

Casey looked confused. "Of course they have to be relocated. What other option is there?" Sarah didn't respond. "Why would she even give us a choice if there's no other option?"

Chuck looked up hopefully. "They could stay." Despite the stunned looks on the faces of both agents, he quickly became enthusiastic about the idea. "We tell them the bare minimum. Not enough to compromise anyone – we might even be able to keep them from finding out about Casey. Plus," he cut off the other man's objection, "they could help us with cover. Sarah and I spend a lot of time with them. When we need to go off on a mission, they can tell us how the movie ends. You know, if we're at a movie."

Casey's only response was a disbelieving stare. Chuck turned to Sarah. "Come on, Sarah, we can make this work. At least… at least give them a choice. Let them know that this option is dangerous, that they can decide to move away. But don't take everything away from them by force. Please."

Sarah mentally cursed Chuck and his sad eyes, wondering how good of a protector she could possibly be if she couldn't turn down even on a crazy request like this – despite the fact that she was mad at him. She sighed. "We'll need to talk to them."

Chuck smiled. He glanced at the monitors showing the cells holding his friends. "Perfect timing – looks like Jim is starting to wake up."

Casey nodded. "I'll handle this."

Chuck quickly blocked the door. "Really, big guy? You'll go in there and beat it out of him?"

"Something like that," Casey answered with a confident nod.

"Tell me this, Casey: What are you going to beat out of him?" Chuck challenged. "He's not suspected of anything. We don't even have any questions for him. We need to talk to him, and I don't think he's known you long enough to carry on a conversation in your special all-grunt language."

"So who talks to him, then?"

"I do," Chuck proclaimed.

Casey shook his head. "You're not trained-"

"Trained for what? To be a good friend? To earn someone's trust in a lasting way? To empathize with someone who's just stumbled into something they don't understand? I think I'm good in those areas. Frankly, I'm a hell of a lot better equipped for those things than either of you are," he finished with a flourish. He left the surveillance room too quickly to catch Sarah's wince and headed down the hall to Interrogation Room A. Glancing up at the camera outside the room, he smiled sardonically and said, "Watch the master at work."

________

Jim stirred sleepily as strange dreams began to chase each other from his mind. He replaced them as best he could with whatever sensory information he could gather. There wasn't much; it was quiet, he was sitting in a fairly uncomfortable chair, and his mouth tasted awful. He slowly opened his eyes, adding a few more details. There was a table in front of him, with another chair identical to the one he occupied facing him. He was in a fairly small room with a mirror on one wall, adjacent to the door. And the door was opening.

Entering the room was a tall man with brown hair. He stepped through the doorway backwards, as if finishing a conversation with someone outside. As he turned, his face took on a slightly guilty expression, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Hey, Jim," he said softly.

The man looked somewhat familiar, but Jim had trouble assigning him a name through the residual drug-induced fog. "Chuck?" he finally guessed.

"Yeah, it's me."

"What… ahh, what's going on?"

"It's kind of a long story," Chuck replied. 'I'll tell you eventually, but is there something else you'd rather start with?"

One concern quickly overrode all the others. "Pam?"

"Pam's fine," Chuck reassured him. "She's just down the hall from here."

"I want to see her," Jim insisted.

Chuck nodded. "Soon."

"Soon?" Jim snapped. "You knock me unconscious and haul me off to… where the hell are we, anyway?"

"It's a secure NSA detention facility," Chuck supplied helpfully. "Not too far from Scranton."

"Fine. You do all that, and I get 'soon' from you on when I can see my fiancée?" Jim demanded.

"I don't think she's awake yet," Chuck dodged. "Anyway, we need to talk about a few things first."

"So talk. Let's go back to: what's going on?"

Chuck nodded. "You and Pam seem to have stumbled into a fairly significant intelligence operation. Sarah and I, we're government operatives. Your neighbor is a bad guy who's been involved with… can I just leave it that he's a bad guy? There are some things I'm not allowed to tell you."

"Wait, we walk into this by accident and get dragged off to jail? Do I get a phone call or something?"

"You're not really in jail," Chuck reassured him. "We just brought you here because it's where we were going anyway with your neighbor, and we couldn't exactly leave you two unconscious in your front yard. Sorry for the prison ambience. It's not really intended… I mean it is, but not for you."

Jim considered that information, and finally nodded his acceptance. "That makes sense, I guess. So you guys are spies or something?"

"Something like that, yeah."

Jim smiled slightly. "No offense, man, but that's kind of surprising."

Chuck smiled back. "Barton, Charles Barton," he said, with a decidedly mediocre British accent. "I'm not exactly a typical secret agent, believe me."

Jim raised his eyebrows. "Is there a story behind that?"

"Yeah, a pretty good one, actually," Chuck confirmed. "But I'm not really allowed to tell anyone. I'll just say that I suddenly became very useful to the government about two years ago, and they sent Sarah to keep an eye on me."

"I suppose you could be in a worse situation," Jim quipped. "So Sarah works for the… what did you call it, the NSA?"

"Right, the National Security Agency."

"Like the wiretapping people? Seems like Sarah would be a little out of place there – I figured gorgeous spies would be more of a CIA thing."

Chuck grinned. "Actually, she is CIA. But we work with the NSA as well, which is how we got lucky enough to use this charming facility."

Recognition flashed in Jim's eyes. "The new security guy in the building?"

"… Yeah." Chuck cringed. "He's probably going to kill me now that I've told you that."

"Sorry, man."

Chuck's face became serious. "Me too. I'm really sorry you got into this." Another pause. "Not that it probably helps, but we tried to keep you away."

Jim closed his eyes as realization washed over him. "Ohhh. So this is why you bailed on the weekend." Chuck nodded. "And it's why we went to New York in the first place." That was verified as well. "So wait, Pam and I lived next door to this bad guy."

"Yeah."

"So were you guys, like, using us to get closer to him?"

"What? No, nothing like that," Chuck declared emphatically.

"Really? These two people you met at work just happened to live next door to some grave threat to national security? That's some coincidence," Jim said skeptically.

"You'd be surprised how often this stuff happens by coincidence," Chuck replied. Seeing Jim's disbelieving look, he continued. "Look, you guys didn't really know your neighbor, right?" Jim shook his head. "So we couldn't have used you for an introduction, or to get into the house. He just happened to live next door to a couple of really nice people we met at work. We found him completely by accident."

Jim didn't respond at first, slipping back into thought. "So, uhh… you being a spy, this isn't one of those things where you have to kill me now, right?"

Chuck smiled sadly. "Not exactly. But you guys finding out is kind of a problem." He took a deep breath. "It's kind of a dangerous situation, for us and for you. Usually what would happen is that you and Pam would be put into witness protection and moved out of Scranton. But in this case, we've also been given the option to keep you here. Basically, what would happen there is that you guys would help us out with our cover sometimes, and we'd keep an eye on you and protect you from anything, uhh, untoward."

"So we can stay?"

"If you want. It's more risky than witness protection. But Sarah and Casey, they're really good at what they do. They'll look out for you," Chuck promised.

"I'll need to talk to Pam about it," Jim temporized.

"Of course," Chuck agreed. "We'll send her in after she's been made aware of the situation, and you can talk it over together."

"Thanks."

"Hey, it's the least we can do after nailing you with a tranq dart and dragging you off to a secret interrogation facility, right?"

Chuck and Jim shook hands, and Chuck knocked on the door to signal for Casey to let him out.

________

"Not bad, Bartowski," Casey said as the two men returned to the interrogation control room.

"Thanks, Casey."

"Maybe you can teach the NSA's next class on Interrogation of Completely Untrained Friendly Personnel," the Colonel taunted.

Chuck sighed. "Hey, it got the job done." He glanced toward Sarah, who was looking at him thoughtfully.

Casey diagnosed this as a lady-feelings moment and scowled. "Well, if you'll excuse me, there's a Fulcrum Elder a few rooms down who's just waiting to be worked over. Feel free to watch, if you'd like to see a real interrogation." He stepped out, cracking his knuckles on his way.

Chuck settled down in front of the monitors. "Pam's up and around," he noted. Sarah didn't respond. "Sarah?"

She sighed wistfully. "You amaze me."

Startled, Chuck turned to face her. "What?"

"You walked into that room and told a man that he and his fiancée had been shot with tranquilizers and hauled off to a secret NSA holding facility, and within half an hour he was shaking your hand and thanking you. Do you have any idea how surreal that was to watch?" Sarah asked.

He shrugged. "It didn't seem like that big a deal, really."

"Tell me this, Chuck. On our first night, did you thank me?"

"I guess not." He frowned pensively. "Sorry."

Sarah shook her head. "I didn't expect you to – I'd just finished ruining your life. Nobody gets thanked after that. But you went in there, and you were upfront, and honest, and sympathetic… you _earned_ that grateful handshake. It makes me wonder how on Earth I landed you."

Chuck laughed awkwardly. "Seriously? You could get any single guy you wanted, and probably most of the married ones. Plus, I thought you were still mad at me."

Sarah gave a small, frustrated smile. "This is _why_ I'm mad at you, Chuck. The sweet, open, trustworthy guy in that room is the guy I fell for. But that guy wasn't the person who proposed."

He shook his head guiltily. "It won't happen again," he promised.

"It had better not. Someone who's willing and able to do what you just did in there is a rare commodity in spy life."

A tentative grin slowly crept across Chuck's face. "Would you like to give it a shot?"

"What?"

"You could talk to Pam," he offered.

Sarah hesitated. "I don't know…"

"It's not really that hard. You just have to be as honest as you possibly can, and try to find something in common with the other person."

"Oh, is that all?" she scoffed.

"You can do this, Sarah. It might not be easy for you, but you can do it. Trust me on this," he pleaded gently.

"Okay, Chuck," she agreed reluctantly. "I'll try it."

________

Pam fumed. She'd been awake for about 15 minutes after being unconscious for God only knew how long. She'd thoroughly explored her Spartan surroundings, which hadn't taken long; the chairs and table were all anchored to the ground, and the door didn't open from the inside. With that task complete, she had sat down once again, taking the chair with its back to the door. She wasn't quite sure why she hadn't returned to the one she'd been seated in originally; it just felt like a way of exerting some small amount of control in a world that seemed to be rapidly spinning off of its axis.

Now facing away from the door, she didn't notice that it had opened until she heard the quiet "Hi, Pam" from behind her. She recognized that voice – it came from the last person she'd seen before blacking out.

"Hello, Sarah – if that is your real name," Pam replied sarcastically.

Sarah crossed the room and took the other chair. "It's not," she answered. Pam's next caustic remark was cut off as the other woman continued. "But I've been Sarah for the last two years or so now, and it's grown on me."

"Okay, whatever-your-name-is," Pam growled. "Where am I? Where's Jim? What gives you the right to knock us unconscious in our own front yard and drag us off to wherever we are? And finally: What the hell is going on?"

Sarah maintained a stoic expression through the outburst. "You're in a secure NSA detention facility. Jim is here too, a couple rooms over. He's fine. You're both here because you walked into the middle of a very important intelligence operation, and some of the people involved are a little overzealous about secrecy." She smiled cautiously. Pam did not return it.

"Explain."

Sarah complied. "Chuck and I are… spies would be the simplest way to put it. Government operatives. We do things that need to be done very quietly. Your neighbor, for example. He's a very important man in a very bad organization."

"Like a terrorist?" Pam queried.

Sarah nodded. "Yeah, basically."

Pam allowed that information to sink in before replying. "I'd ask what a pair of spies is doing in Scranton, but I think you just answered that question, didn't you?"

"Actually, no. We found him here by accident," Sarah explained. "The government wants us to maintain a civilian life because it's cheaper than locking us in a bunker between missions – giving us outside jobs lets us pay our own rent. Our team just happened to be stationed in Scranton."

"I guess that makes as much sense as anything I've heard today," Pam conceded.

"Well, based on the fact that you've completely blown our cover within our first month in the new location, it wouldn't surprise me if they reevaluate that idea." Seeing the alarmed look on Pam's face, Sarah quickly moved to clarify. "I'm not blaming you guys – if anything, it's my fault for not doing a better job of keeping you in New York. And I exaggerated a little too; I guess our cover isn't completely blown. It's just you and Jim, not CNN," she said with a smile. "Actually, I'm curious as to what you guys were doing back in town that early. But it only seems fair for you to ask the questions first."

Pam sifted through the dozens of questions that were running through her mind. She settled on the one that seemed most pressing. "Are we in trouble?"

"No. Well, not from us, at least as long as you can keep a secret," Sarah corrected herself. "The fact that you know who we are puts you in some amount of danger from our enemies."

"Danger?" The worry in Pam's eyes was obvious.

"It shouldn't be a lot, but you never quite know. The two of you can go into Witness Protection if you like. If you decide to stay in Scranton, we'll protect you. As soon as we're done here, you can talk to Jim about the decision."

Somewhat reassured, Pam decided to find out a little more about her would-be protector. "So… you're a spy," she started obviously.

Sarah eyed her quizzically. "Yup."

"How did that happen?"

"Becoming a spy?" Sarah clarified. "Can we do the short version? My dad was… actually, still is a bit of an unscrupulous guy. He got in a lot of trouble, with the law and with the wrong kind of people. When he was arrested, the CIA figured he'd trained me enough to make me a good candidate, and asked me to join up."

"What's it like?" Pam asked. "Being a spy, I mean."

Sarah chuckled quietly. "That's kind of a loaded question."

"You don't have to give me any specifics or anything," Pam temporized. "Just… if you could sum up being a spy in one word, what would it be?"

The agent paused to consider her answer. It came out as a barely-audible whisper that seemed to surprise Sarah nearly as much as it did Pam. "Lonely."

"Wow. That's not really what I was expecting to hear."

Sarah shrugged. "It's not really what I was expecting to say. But it's basically true – we're trained to be closed off and secretive, and doing that isn't exactly a great way to make friends."

"But you have Chuck," Pam replied. "Wait, you do have Chuck, right? That's not just some way for the two of you to blend in?"

"That was how it started out – when Chuck was first working with us, I pretended to be his girlfriend to explain how I'd shown up in his life."

"So what happened?"

Sarah smiled shyly. "Chuck happened."

"Really? No offense," Pam quickly added in response to the frown that came across Sarah's face, "he's a really nice guy. But, I mean, you're a spy. You must meet all kinds of men. And you're so… I mean, the creepy guys at the office haven't paid a bit of attention to me since you showed up. Which I'd been meaning to thank you for, by the way." Sarah's face softened at the comment. "Why Chuck?" Pam asked.

"I guess it kind of goes back to the whole loneliness thing," Sarah mused. "I mean, as a spy, every time I interact with a man for a mission, it's all about sex. When you talk to your bosses, it's all about what you can do for them. When you talk to a partner, it's all about work. And you don't talk to anyone else."

Pam nodded encouragingly, prompting Sarah to continue.

"Even before that, my family life was completely screwed up. When I met Chuck, it had been so long since another person had genuinely cared about me that I literally could not remember the last time. And Chuck is just so genuinely sweet and loving… honestly, I never had a chance," she finished with a smile.

Pam was flummoxed. Here this person had knocked her unconscious and hauled her off to a secret prison, and now Pam was… worried about her. Unsure of which direction to take the questioning, she settled on, "But Chuck is a spy too, right? Shouldn't he be just as closed off?"

A long pause preceded Sarah's response. "Chuck became a spy under some very unusual circumstances. He wasn't recruited and trained like I was. He just happened to be someone whose help the government needed – and still needs."

Pam nodded. That made some amount of sense – Chuck certainly didn't look like a spy. She tried to come up with a way to ask the next question gently. Sarah noticed, which in retrospect should have been predictable. She was probably trained to notice.

"I know what it sounds like, Pam. Like Chuck's taking advantage of my sketchy history and vulnerability. Like I've fallen in love with the idea of the normal life I never had, and I'm projecting that onto him. Either of those about right?"

Pam offered what she hoped was an apologetic look.

"I'm not going to say that would have been impossible," Sarah confessed. "But Chuck's more than just an available shoulder to cry on. He's really incredible at what he does for the government, even when he's working outside his primary role." She smiled fondly. "The first night I met him, we were chased onto the roof of a very tall building by an assassin. We had guns pointed at us. Chuck was completely freaking out. Then, not ten minutes later, he defused a bomb by downloading a virus onto the laptop that controlled it. One of the craziest things I'd ever seen."

"Wow."

"He does stuff like that all the time. He's saved hundreds of lives over the last two years, most of them in the most unconventional way possible. Looking at it as objectively as I possibly can, Chuck is a real catch – smart, funny, handsome, and, incidentally, a hero many times over. He also happens to be the sweetest, most loving man I've ever met. I'm an impossibly lucky woman."

Pam scarcely managed to keep her jaw from dropping. "You're very protective of him," she commented.

"Well, it is my job," Sarah dodged.

"Mm hmm," Pam said, giggling a little. "You're really far gone, aren't you?"

Sarah blushed, surprising both women. "Yeah, I really am." They both smiled.

While she was enjoying the bonding time far more than she'd expected to enjoy hanging out with a CIA agent, Pam decided to move things along so she could see Jim again. "So, you wanted to ask me something earlier?"

It took Sarah a moment to recall her question. "Right. Why did you guys come back to Scranton? We thought you'd be in the hotel overnight at least."

"Well… I kind of suspected that something was up with you guys. So after we split up last night, Jim and I waited a couple hours and then went to check on you. We discovered that you'd left, so we asked the front desk, and they gave us your note."

"You figured out that we were gone? How?"

"I swiped Chuck's room key while we were dancing," Pam replied hesitantly. She was relieved when Sarah laughed.

"That's fantastic," she said. "He'll never live that one down, I can assure you. But what made you steal the key?"

"It was the proposal," Pam explained. "I caught your reflections in one of the 'Now Showing' posters at the theater while you were hugging, and saw that you guys were having a conversation and that you didn't seem all that happy. And then you were really quiet on the drive back to the apartment. And later that night, you seemed more… bubbly, I guess, than usual. Plus, I mean, he proposed at a movie theater. It just seemed weird."

Sarah shook her head. "That's some impressive spy work, Beesly. Have you considered a career in espionage?"

"Oh, uhh…" Pam's reply was cut off as Sarah laughed.

"All right, I think it's about time for you to see Jim. You guys talk things over and let us know whether you'd rather go for Witness Protection, or take your chances in Scranton with us." Pam nodded, and Sarah stood and knocked on the door.

________

Chuck opened the door to Interrogation Room C and stepped to the side to allow Sarah and Pam to exit. Sarah directed Pam down the hall toward Jim, and then turned to face Chuck. He looked back at her in amazement.

"Sarah, what you said…" She immediately interrupted.

"I meant every word." She wrapped her arms around his neck, leaned up onto her toes, and kissed him deeply but gently. After several seconds, their lips separated.

Chuck bent down to whisper in her ear. "I'm really proud of you."

"What?" That hadn't exactly been the response Sarah had expected.

"After all you've gone through in your life, to go into that room and be completely honest with someone who you easily could have manipulated… you did really great, Sarah."

"It's all your good influence," she deflected.

"Not a chance. There's no way I'm letting you give me all the credit for the spy stuff I've done over the last two years, most of which has been YOUR good influence, if you won't admit that you've partly responsible for your own improvement at being open with people," he insisted.

Sarah sighed softly into Chuck's ear. "Guess we complement each other pretty well."

He chuckled in response. "I'd have gone with something more like perfectly." He paused briefly. "So, am I still in the doghouse?"

"Oh, I'd say you're working your way toward the back door." He smiled impishly, and she smacked his arm. "Not like that!"

________

Jim looked up as the door to his room opened again, ending what had been a very boring half hour. Much as he liked Chuck, he certainly preferred his new visitor. He smiled as his fiancée walked toward him.

"Hey, sweetie. What do you think?" he asked.

"You first," she replied, mimicking his casual lean against the table.

"Well, neither of us really has any family in Scranton now that my parents have moved away," he said pensively. "And frankly, the main reason I've stayed at Dunder Mifflin as long as I have is you. So if you'd like to leave, I'd be happy to."

"And if I'd like to stay?"

Jim smiled. "I'm all right with that too."

"I really do like being a salesperson. And I know I don't see my parents that often, but we wouldn't see them at all in Witness Protection. And…" she trailed off.

"And what?"

"And I really think Sarah could use a friend," Pam confessed.

Jim leaned down and kissed her lightly on the lips. "Then let's do it."

________

Casey returned to the surveillance room after forty minutes of work on Robert Grich. His knuckles were a little sore, but nothing serious. Of course, the real heavy stuff hadn't gotten started yet.

He glanced down at the monitor for Room A, where he'd stashed Halpert. He and his fiancée were heading for the door. The other couple opened it for them, they talked briefly, then the women hugged and the men shook hands.

Casey grimaced and pulled out his phone. "Colonel Casey, calling for General Beckman."

"Yes, General, it's me. They've done what you expected."

"Are you sure that's the best…"

"Yes ma'am. I understand."

Casey flipped the phone shut.

"Shit."


	6. Relaxation

A/N: As always, enormous thanks to my incomparably patient betas, KathGrangerPotter and sgafan360. Their constant badgering has made this story better to an inexpressible degree.

Housekeeping (last time, I promise): The "what should I write next" poll will be closing later this week, so get your votes in now!

A pair of outstanding television shows, with excellent leading and supporting characters, fraught with both humor and drama — when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of these beloved fandoms committed to the issue, and the auspices of this story, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair were it not for the fact that I don't own either Chuck or the Office, so nothing I write here has any impact on them.

* * *

Chapter 6: Relaxation

Pam sighed happily. Sarah was opening a bottle of wine to start off a girls' night, while Chuck had made his way to a nearby bar with Pam's husband. Just over one month after the wedding, the newly-minted Mrs. Halpert still smiled every time that particular word popped into her head.

In the weeks since the raid and subsequent trip to the NSA interrogation bunker, the four friends had settled into such a comfortable routine that Pam occasionally forgot about the double lives she'd stumbled across. Indeed, she was quite confident that had their neighbor not been the kind of person who required CIA attention, she'd never have figured out the secret. As it was, the knowledge had only the barest impact on her life. For all intents and purposes, Chuck and Sarah had spent the last three months as completely normal people, and Pam enjoyed having them around.

Sarah finished wrestling with the corkscrew and pulled up the second barstool at the kitchen island after passing Pam a glass.

Pam started the conversation. "So, you and Chuck set a date yet?"

Sarah winced slightly. "Not yet. We're pretty happy just being engaged for now."

"Well, you don't want to wait too long," Pam advised. "I was engaged to Roy for fricking ever. Trust me, it gets old after a while."

"Yeah, well, aren't you glad you waited with Roy? After all, you did end up marrying someone else…"

Pam laughed. "That's playing dirty. Anyway, are you planning to marry someone other than Chuck?"

"Well, you never know. I mean, someone sweeter than the sweetest man in the world could always… excuse me," Sarah apologized. Her buzzing phone indicated the presence of a new text message. A worried look crossed her face as she read it. "Uhh, I have to make a call. Sorry," she said as she left the room.

* * *

Chuck and Jim were laughing as they walked into their favorite bar. As they sat down and ordered their first beers, Chuck reflected on the recent changes in his life. Six months ago, he never would have expected to have voluntarily re-uploaded the Intersect. He certainly wouldn't have anticipated being in a genuine, firmly-established relationship with Sarah. And the construction of a new life, complete with new best friends, in Scranton, Pennsylvania… well, that one would have just sounded ridiculous. But despite all of its surprises, life was pretty good. Now if he could just figure out how he should propose to Sarah – for real this time – it would be just about perfect.

"New bartender," Jim commented idly.

Chuck reprimanded himself for not noticing the change first, and looked the man over with a practiced eye. Nothing… except for that tattoo on his arm. He froze briefly as his brain recovered from the reliably disorienting assault of the flash, then grasped his freshly-ordered beer bottle and swung it at the bartender's head. The sound of breaking glass was immediately followed by that of an unconscious body hitting the floor.

"Uhh, Chuck?"

"Our new barkeep is Louis 'Big Louie' Whitaker, a low-level operative for a domestic terrorist group called Fulcrum," Chuck explained.

"Okay… how the hell do you know that?" Jim asked, the confusion in his eyes belying the apparent calmness of his voice.

"Saw his picture in a file once," Chuck dodged. "The point is, we may have sort of a spy situation on our hands." His right hand moved toward the timepiece fixed around his left wrist, finding and pressing the button he was looking for. "Here, give me your watch."

"My watch? Why?"

"Because I'm giving you mine, and it would look weird if you wore two." Chuck declined to elaborate further, and Jim didn't argue as they made the switch. "Go behind the bar and see if our friend stashed a gun anywhere."

"I don't know how to use a gun!" Jim objected.

"Neither do I. But I assume he does, and I don't want him knowing where it is if he wakes up. If you don't find anything, then stay back there and keep your head down." Chuck's instructions were punctuated by the sound of a vehicle screeching to a stop outside. That was enough to trigger his second flash of the evening. He picked up one of the barstools and hefted it experimentally.

"What are you doing?" Jim had peered over the edge of the counter. "Are you seriously getting into some kind of bar brawl?"

Chuck shrugged innocently. "I feel like I've done this hundreds of times before."

Their conversation was interrupted by the entry of two men of the generic henchman type. Turning to face them, Chuck hurled the stool in their direction. Both men were caught off guard, slammed into the door, and knocked out. Chuck retrieved his half-bottle and marveled once again at the unusual efficiency of the Intersect as he prepared for round two.

* * *

Sarah pressed speed dial 2 on her cell phone as she stepped into the living room. "Casey, Chuck's hit the alarm button on his watch."

"Walker."

"Call the General and let her know what's going on," she instructed.

"Walker!"

"Keep tracking him. I'll be over in a minute."

"WALKER!"

Casey's interruptions finally got through to Sarah. "What?" she asked irritably.

"Chuck's been cut off."

"What?" Sarah's annoyance quickly gave way to shock.

"Cut off," Casey repeated. "No help from the government. Beckman's decided he's too much of a liability to keep working for us, and doesn't think she'll be able to hold him in a bunker with the new Intersect. So she decided to wait until he got into trouble again, get us to track him down, and 'reluctantly' determine that whatever group of terrorists has him is worth trading his life for."

"She's going to kill him?" Sarah managed to croak.

"Bomb the crap out of his eventual location," Casey confirmed.

"Casey," Sarah whispered dangerously, "why the hell didn't you tell me this _before?_"

"If I had, you'd have run, and they'd have known it was me who told you. This way, you can get out, and I can help you from the inside."

"Unless…" Sarah shook her head, unwilling to vocalize the possibility that was haunting her thoughts. "I think we've had a false alarm, Casey. Keep tracking Chuck's location, and I'll chase him down and yell at him for screwing around with his watch."

"Will do," Casey assented. "Good luck, Walker."

"You realize that if this doesn't work out, you're the first person I'll come after," she replied coldly. The connection went dead as Casey ended the call, and the fire that Sarah had felt during the conversation quickly abandoned her. The phone slipped from her hand, bouncing silently off of the carpeted floor. She stood motionless in the living room as the world seemingly ended around her. Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, she summed up the situation as well as she could.

"Fuck."

* * *

Round two of the bar fight was a profoundly uninteresting event. It consisted mostly of Chuck turning over a table and taking cover to avoid the semiautomatic weapons fire that poured through the front window of the building. As the gunfire stopped, Chuck looked up to see two agents menacing him with Uzis, and a third prompting Jim from behind the bar in similar fashion.

"Please, Mr. Bartowski. There's no need for this to get any uglier than it already has. Set your bottle down – I just want to talk." The voice came from a small man in the middle of the room. He was flanked by two larger ones, armed identically to Chuck and Jim's captors.

"I'm sorry, I'm afraid you have me confused with someone else. My name is Charles Barton."

"Of course," the man nodded in mock solemnity. "Always stick to the cover story, Mr. Bartowski. It's what any professional agent would do. But then, you're not a professional, are you?"

"Excuse me, I am a very professional IT manager," Chuck protested. His objection was ignored.

"No, in fact, my research indicates that you entered the intelligence community as a rank amateur. And yet, you and your team have enjoyed an unprecedented level of effectiveness against Fulcrum."

"Fulcrum?" Chuck twisted his face into what he hoped was a confused expression. "I'm not quite sure what you mean. I have nothing against the simple machines."

The man laughed, but didn't allow his speech to be driven off course. "Now, I have no doubt that you're a very capable person, and that Agents Walker and Casey are outstanding. Still, it seems like something else must have been involved here. After all, if Walker and Casey were the primary reasons for your team's success, why would you be involved at all?"

"Simple answer?" Chuck offered. "I'm not involved. I have no idea what you're talking about."

"From what I can tell, your team's run of unabridged success began in the late months of 2007. Now, this is interesting, because in September 2007, your college roommate, Bryce Larkin, downloaded a certain database of government information known as the Intersect. Mr. Larkin emailed that information to somebody before being apprehended."

Chuck refused to react to the realization that these people knew who he was. "I'm sorry, Bryce who?"

"Here's where it gets really interesting," the smaller man continued, clearly warming to his topic. "If the recipient of Mr. Larkin's email were to open the file, he would be exposed to thousands of images that were encoded with virtually every bit of information collected by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and everyone else in the alphabet soup. Of course, this would overload almost anyone's brain. But if the right individual could be found, someone who could remember and process the images, that person would become an incredible asset. If he was placed on a team with capable agents, you might even expect that team to enjoy a level of success similar to… yours."

"It's a fascinating tale, really. An epic. You should consider a career in screenwriting," Chuck advised casually.

"I give you full marks for sticking to your story, Mr. Bartowski. Your denials are quite believable."

"The truth is often like that."

"Here's the thing, though. I find the best way to test a theory like this is not to confront someone like yourself, who is trying desperately to hide the truth. No, the best way is to tell it to someone who knows part of the story," said the man, looking significantly at Jim, "and watch the rest of the pieces fall… into… place."

Jim cringed and mouthed "Sorry" across the room.

"Of course, I had no real way of knowing you'd be accompanied by a friend, or that he would know enough to be as helpful as he was. Fortunately, there's another test available to us. We had a man involved in the original Intersect project, actually the first to develop the idea of a human version. He was thoughtful enough to add a special data file, significantly larger than the rest, which would allow us to identify a human Intersect with very little trouble. So, if I say Small Bear Lake…"

Chuck flashed – a long one, containing random bits of useless information.

"… then something like that should happen," the man finished as Chuck staggered slightly. "Load them into the van. Check Mr. Bartowski here for tracking devices first – I imagine the government likes to know where he is."

One of the guards pulled out a wand-like device and scanned Chuck thoroughly. "He's clean."

The leader of the group turned suspiciously. "I find that difficult to believe."

"I left it at the apartment," Chuck explained. "I get tired of being followed around all the time."

"That, I know I don't believe," the man responded. "Take his cell phone, his keys, and his watch. Leave them here – we don't want his watchdogs thinking he's gone anywhere."

* * *

Pam was worried. Sarah had left the kitchen almost ten minutes ago, and she hadn't heard a sound from the living room for at least five. She decided to investigate.

Sarah stood in the middle of the room. Her arms hung limply at her sides, and the color had completely drained from her face.

"Sarah?"

The other woman reacted somewhat differently than Pam expected – she bolted down the hall toward the bathroom. Pam followed her, walking in on Sarah emptying her stomach into the toilet.

"My God, Sarah, are you all right?" she asked, worry lacing her voice.

Sarah seemed to collect herself, standing up slowly. "Chuck's in trouble."

"So go get him. It can't be the first time that's happened, right?"

She shook her head. "No. But it's the first hint of danger we've had since that first weekend, so there's no reason anyone should even know we're here. Oh, and my partner has told me that the government isn't going to help, and that if he tells his superior something's wrong, there'll be an air strike launched to take out Chuck and whatever enemy agents are around him."

Pam's eyebrows quickly climbed her forehead.

"I'm sorry," the blonde backtracked. "I shouldn't be dumping all this on you, I'm just freaking out a little right now."

"Sarah…" Pam stuttered. "Jim is with Chuck."

"Damn it!" Pam jumped at the outburst. "Sorry, Pam, it's not you. I'm not thinking straight. Need to clear my head." Sarah thought for a moment, then stepped over to the medicine cabinet, opened one of the doors, and rested her left pinky on the bottom shelf. "You might want to turn around."

Pam complied. Moments later, she heard the cabinet door slam, followed immediately by a yell from Sarah. She turned quickly back to her friend.

Sarah's eyes were colder than Pam had ever seen them. Frankly, they were colder than any eyes she could remember. Pam's own eyes widened as the blond spy spoke again.

"I needed an adrenaline rush to focus a little." Pam nodded in agreement, managing not to stare at her friend's self-inflicted wound. "Okay. I think we'll have to reschedule girls' night," Sarah said evenly. "You should go home – I'll let you know if I find anything out."

Pam shook her head vehemently. "I'm coming."

Sarah almost laughed. "I don't really have time to come up with an eloquent way to say _no_."

Pam didn't back down. "What can you give me in a 'yes'? There's no way I'm not going after my husband – and I'm not letting you do this alone, either."

Sarah shook her head sympathetically. "Honestly, Pam, what are you going to do?"

"You said yourself that I've done some pretty good spy work," the brunette replied belligerently.

"But we're not just talking about investigation. There's a good chance we're looking at a fight here."

A slight tinge of fear entered Pam's eyes, but she remained determined. "I'm in, Sarah. For whatever it takes."

Sarah studied her friend thoughtfully. Her agent side reprimanded her for even considering the possibility of bringing an untrained civilian along on a mission. But another part of her brought up the nagging reminder that last time she'd been accompanied by a novice, the operation had gone pretty well. While she might not be a likely candidate to defuse a bomb, it wasn't impossible that Pam had something to offer. And with Jim's life depending on them just as much as Chuck's, there was no way Sarah could personally justify leaving Pam at home if there was even the slightest chance that she could help.

"All right."


	7. Altercation

A/N: Thanks once again to KathGrangerPotter for her persistence in keeping everyone's actions somewhere in the same ZIP code as character. It's almost ridiculous how much her influence has improved this chapter, and the story as a whole.

While everyone who loves Chuck and the Office must contemplate with the utmost pride and enthusiasm the growth and expansion of our fandoms, the sufficiency of our characters to stand against the rudest shocks of angst, the wonderful creativity and humor of our fanfic writers, and the demonstrated superiority of our showrunners, it behooves us to constantly watch for every symptom of insidious infirmity that threatens our shows' vigor. One such symptom would be someone like myself making a spurious claim of ownership. Fortunately, I'm not going to do that.

* * *

Chapter 7: Altercation

Pam's head was still spinning. Right after the talk in the bathroom, Sarah had gotten a call telling her that Chuck was on the move, heading southwest. The blonde had instructed the caller to let her know when he stopped. After that, she'd taken Pam into her bedroom and tossed her a heavy black garment. "Bullet-proof vest, specially made for women of our… dimensions." They'd each put one on. Then Pam had watched in silent awe as Dunder Mifflin's receptionist transformed herself into a walking arsenal, with a pair of pistols, multiple sheaths of throwing knives, and a double-barreled shotgun with an ammo belt full of shells. "Ready?" Sarah asked. Seeing her friend's mute nod, she headed for the door. "Let's go."

"Where are we going?" Pam asked.

"The bar."

The brunette frowned. "Aren't they already gone?"

"Doesn't mean we can't learn anything there," Sarah explained. "We'll take your car."

"Wouldn't the Porsche be faster?"

Sarah nodded. "Yeah, but with any luck, we'll need more than two seats on the return trip."

* * *

Pam stared in shock at the thoroughly destroyed bar front.

"See, we've learned something already. They have guns," Sarah observed placidly.

"That's a huge help," Pam replied sarcastically.

"More specifically, they have submachine guns, fired from multiple locations in the parking lot, based on the type and distribution of the shell casings." She quickly expanded the scope of her examination of the area. "Looks like whoever did this closed off the street in both directions before anything happened. All the other businesses around here are closed for the day. No witnesses, no police response." She stepped toward the front door, which was surprisingly intact.

Pam followed her in and gaped at the extensive devastation that had been wreaked on the building. Sarah, meanwhile, moved slowly about to assess the situation.

"No bloodstains anywhere that I can see," she declared.

"Is that good news?"

"It's certainly not bad news… the bullet impacts are all high on the wall, which means the gunfire was just intended to pin people down. I'm guessing two shooters in the parking lot, one for each side, while the rest of the group walked in through the front door and located the bar's occupants. Hello," Sarah broke off as she stepped behind the bar. "And who might you be?"

"Bartender?" Pam theorized.

"Why do you say that?" Sarah queried.

Pam shrugged. "He's behind the bar."

Sarah smiled. "Probably a good bet. He's also out like a light… and has a few shards of glass in his hair. Beer bottle, looks like."

"Why would guys with guns hit someone with a beer bottle?"

"They wouldn't. But guys without guns might." Seeing the residual confusion on Pam's face, Sarah explained further. "My guess is that Chuck whacked the guy."

Pam found a broken bottle on the floor, holding it up for Sarah's examination. "Yeah, it matches," the spy confirmed. "Where did you find it?"

"Behind this table," Pam replied, gesturing toward the location.

"So Chuck took cover there, or Jim."

"Wait, I'm a little confused about something. Why would Chuck hit the bartender?" Pam asked. "If someone started shooting up a bar I was in, I think I'd just duck right away, and I definitely wouldn't suspect that the bartender was involved."

"Chuck has kind of a… sixth sense about these things," Sarah dodged. "He's got an uncanny ability to recognize people as threats."

"Still, it seems like the people with guns would be a bigger threat," Pam objected.

"No question," Sarah agreed. "I'd guess he hit the guy before the gunmen showed up. Which means he knew something was coming, which means he had some time to prepare," she concluded excitedly. "Keep looking."

Pam scoured the seating area, while Sarah searched the rest of the bar. She emerged from the men's room with full hands.

"Chuck's phone and his keys, and a watch," she listed.

"That's Jim's watch," Pam announced. "I got it for his birthday. Why would they take Jim's watch?"

"They wouldn't – but they'd take Chuck's watch. They must have checked him for GPS tracking devices," Sarah surmised.

"Jim's watch doesn't have a GPS…"

"But Chuck's does – it's how we monitor him remotely. He must have found somewhere to stash it, and borrowed Jim's watch so they wouldn't look for another one," Sarah guessed. "That's why we're still getting a signal."

"So are we done here?" Pam asked.

"Yeah, I think so," Sarah replied, walking toward the door. "Just waiting to hear what our destination is."

"Hey Sarah?" Pam called haltingly. Seeing her friend turn and fix her with an inquisitive gaze, Pam swallowed her nervousness and continued. "This is going to be dangerous, isn't it?"

"You can back out at any time, Pam," Sarah answered comfortingly.

Pam shook her head firmly. "No. I was just wondering if you could maybe teach me a few fighting moves or something, so I can look out for myself a little."

Sarah smiled slightly. "I can do better than that. Come on," she instructed, waving her friend to follow her out of the building.

Pam found the blonde leaning through the passenger window of her car and looking through the glove compartment. As Sarah stood and turned to face her, Pam jumped slightly at the sight of the weapon in her hand.

"Here," Sarah offered.

Pam stared at her. "A gun? That seems like a bad idea."

Sarah responded with a disapproving frown. "If you want to protect yourself, this is the easiest way I know. We can go over the basics of handling it here pretty quickly."

"I just don't think I'm a gun sort of person," Pam protested. "I'm a little freaked out just knowing you kept this in my car."

"Spies keep guns everywhere," Sarah informed her friend calmly. "Besides, it's not a real gun – it fires tranquilizer darts."

"Fine," Pam conceded reluctantly. She gingerly grasped the weapon, letting her hand become accustomed to its feel. Moving alongside her, Sarah demonstrated how to line up the sights, engage and remove the safety, unload and reload the magazine, and finally, how to hold steady while firing. Despite the surreal feeling of the lesson, Pam proved to be a quick learner, becoming almost comfortable with the process in the five minutes before Sarah's phone buzzed. The blonde stepped away to answer it.

"Casey? All right. Do you know what kind of building… Okay. Any other information you can give me? Great. Thanks."

She hung up. "The signal from the watch has stopped moving. They're in a warehouse in Nanticoke." Pam quickly joined her in the car.

* * *

"I need to ask you something."

Sarah's statement startled Pam out of a brief daze. "What's that?"

"Probably should have asked you before we left, but we're kind of pressed for time here," the CIA agent continued apologetically. "How far are you willing to go on this?"

Pam returned Sarah's gaze resolutely. "I'd die for Jim."

"That's good to know," Sarah replied. "But it's not really what I'm asking – I was already pretty confident in that."

"What is it, then?"

Sarah sighed. "You're a good person, Pam. Dying for someone else is pretty much never the ultimate test of loyalty, for a good person."

"What do you mean?"

"I'd rather not go too deep into what I mean, because I don't want to freak you out right now," Sarah hedged. "The only question that should matter today is: Would you harm someone else for Jim?"

Pam said nothing.

"It's not an easy question, I know," Sarah said.

"Really? I mean, don't you kill people?"

"For my job, yes. I've killed roughly 70 people while doing my duty. Outside of that, I've only killed one." She paused. "That was for Chuck."

"Tell me," Pam requested.

"Are you sure? I really don't want to mess with your head at this point."

"I'm sure," Pam affirmed.

"It was at the end of a mission," Sarah started. "This enemy agent had found out… something about Chuck, something that would cause dozens, hundreds of other people to come after him. I caught up with him and we fought. He almost killed me, but I finally had him at gunpoint, and he surrendered."

"So what happened?"

"He told me that he knew," Sarah recalled in a shaky voice. "He told me that the government wouldn't be able to hold him, that he'd get out somehow, and that Chuck's life would be over. So I shot him."

Pam stared wordlessly out the passenger window.

"I shot him, and I told Chuck we'd arrested him," Sarah continued. "And you know what really sucked? He saw me. He saw me shoot the son of a bitch, and he knew I lied to him. It almost destroyed our relationship." She stopped briefly for effect. "And I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Okay, not the lying. But the shooting? No question."

Pam turned back to face Sarah. "None at all?"

Sarah shook her head. "I'm not saying you have to decide right now what you're willing to do, because you really can't know until you're in that situation. Just know that you may have to decide."

Pam nodded thoughtfully. "Thanks."

Sarah smiled nervously in reply. "You sure it helped?"

"Yeah. I think I'm ready," she said.

"That's good. Because we're here."

Pam and Sarah dismounted from the car, walking toward the door on the west side of the warehouse. Chuck's last location had been reported as building's northwest corner, and this was the closest entrance to that spot. Sarah picked the rusty lock with some difficulty, and pulled lightly on the door. It opened with a slight creak. "So much for stealth," she muttered.

The warehouse was filled with shipping containers. They were stacked in evenly-spaced rows running perpendicular to the route between the door and the corner office that appeared to be Sarah's destination. That made things tricky; they'd have to walk past at least ten rows of containers, and the gap between each pair posed a risk that they'd be seen by a guard. The unfortunate layout of the building, the patchwork composition of the two-person strike team, and the unknown number of waiting enemies combined to form a tactical situation that Sarah assessed as comfortably less-than-optimal.

She quickly formulated a basic plan and turned to Pam. "I'll lead. I'll be looking down each aisle in turn and facing forward apart from that. You stay one row back, check to see that each one is clear before you cross, and watch behind us otherwise." Pam nodded, and Sarah moved ahead.

The first three rows were passed without incident, and Sarah crossed the fourth with equal ease. When Pam looked to follow, she saw a guard at the other end. She pulled back quickly with a nervous squeak. Sarah turned to assess the situation and saw that the guard was moving toward them. She crouched down and leaned carefully around the corner of the nearest container, firing a single round from a silenced pistol. It caught the man just above the left eye, dropping him instantly. She signaled Pam to come across and whispered, "We're going to have to move faster – we need to reach them before they find that body." Pam nodded, and Sarah moved off again.

They progressed smoothly until there were only two stacks of containers ahead of them. Sarah poked her head around the corner and quickly learned that the guard at the end of this row was more alert than the other man they'd encountered. He immediately fired at the space Sarah's head had occupied moments before. She ducked back and whispered some brief instructions to Pam, then ran off down the last aisle they'd crossed.

Pam waited for a break in the gunfire, then stuck her dart gun awkwardly around the corner and pulled the trigger twice. She withdrew in mild terror as the shooting resumed, recovering only when it stopped abruptly. She hesitantly peeked, seeing the guard lying prone on the ground with a knife protruding from the back of his neck. Sarah retrieved the blade, jogged back to her friend, and nodded. "Nice job."

"I didn't do anything," Pam protested.

"You kept his attention. That's all we needed," Sarah countered. "Oh, there aren't any more guards in this area of the building."

"On to the office, then?" Pam suggested.

In response, Sarah strode quickly to the door of the room in question. Trying the knob and finding it locked, she stepped to the side, readied her shotgun, and blew the deadbolt apart. She kicked the door open and rolled into the darkened room. Pam quickly crouched and followed her, flipping on the lights as she entered.

A lone man sat tied to a chair in the middle of the room. Sarah watched in stunned silence as Pam leapt to her feet and threw her arms around her husband. Rallying, she walked over and cut Jim loose from his bonds. His attempt to hug his wife was inhibited as Sarah grabbed his left arm.

"Why do you have Chuck's watch?"

Jim came up for air from Pam's kiss and replied, "We switched in the bar, just before the shooting started. It was a little weird."

Sarah's face crumpled. Pam explained. "There's a GPS tracking device in the watch. Chuck must have figured they'd check him, and bet that they wouldn't scan you." Jim nodded. Pam saw that Sarah was on the verge of tears, and endeavored to add a hint of hope to the situation. "When did you last see him?"

"They split us up after we got here. It was a while ago."

* * *

"Had enough, Mr. Bartowski?"

The captors had been subjecting Chuck to audible Intersect triggers for over half an hour. At first, he'd thought they were probing him for information. But after he'd proclaimed that he'd never tell them anything, the small man who had led the strike team had merely laughed. "We already know everything that's in there, Mr. Bartowski. But we're aware that the data retrieval process is quite unpleasant. Consider it an inducement to join the Ring."

It was not a particularly effective form of torture; these men seemed to be unaware of the upgrades to the new version of the Intersect. But Chuck quickly realized that if his captors didn't think he was suffering, they'd be tempted to switch to something that would work much better.

"Gah! I'll never join you!" he gasped, contorting his face into an overtly pained grimace. All this flashing meant that he was going to have a headache later. But for now, he carefully studied his surroundings and quietly celebrated the fact that the agents holding him, confident that their guns served as a sufficient deterrent, hadn't tied him up.

* * *

Sarah's legs nearly gave way. She managed to catch herself on the chair Jim had been tied to. She told herself that this situation was nothing she hadn't dealt with before, that Agent Walker could handle anything. The problem was that Agent Walker had let a little too much of Sarah out for the talk with Pam on the drive to the warehouse, and she didn't seem to be coming back any time soon. And while Sarah was a highly capable spy in her own right, she was also struggling to fend off the waves of panic resulting from the fact that she had no idea where to find her boyfriend. She gulped down several desperate breaths and fought to calm herself enough to consider her next move.

The bulky form of another guard stepped into the room before she could finish. Her mind vaguely registered Pam yanking Jim to the ground and firing a few wild shots from her tranq gun, all while screaming "Sarah, get down!" Seemingly in slow motion, she drew her own pistol, and watched as the sights instinctively lined up with the target's forehead. She pulled the trigger, and was momentarily confused at the gunshot's apparent echo in a room that seemed far too small for one. The second sound was quickly explained by the painful impact of a round from her assailant's weapon on her chest.

Breath and balance abandoned Sarah at the same instant, sending her toppling to the ground. Her eyes lost their focus on the room's drab ceiling, and the frantic exclamations of her companions devolved into vague mumbling. A final, barely audible "Chuck" escaped her lips, and then she slipped away from the conscious world.

* * *

"Sarah!" Pam yelled hysterically. "Sarah, wake up!"

Jim removed his fingers from the wrist of the injured agent. "She's alive, and she's not bleeding. She'll be all right, Pam."

The brunette shook her head insistently. "How many people grabbed you guys from the bar?"

"Uhh… five thugs, plus a ringleader," Jim counted.

"The guy Sarah drilled between the eyes over there is her third kill since showing up here. That leaves three more, and it doesn't look like she's exactly in prime last-stand-mounting condition right now," Pam said despondently. Staring at the unconscious form of her friend, Pam suddenly reached a decision. "Help me turn this desk on its side," she instructed.

Jim complied. "What are we doing?" he queried.

"Fortifying. Go kill the lights and shut the door," she instructed calmly. Kneeling down once again, she pulled Sarah into a safe position behind the improvised barricade.

"What, are we going to fool them into thinking nobody's here?" Jim asked, his voice laced with a surprising amount of sarcasm.

Looking sharply up at him, Pam noticed the fear in his eyes and held back the harsh response that had sprung to her mind. "No, but we're going to force them to let us know when they get here, and give ourselves a better view of them than they have of us." Suitably chastened, Jim obeyed his orders. As satisfied as she could be given the situation, Pam turned back to her unconscious friend, and her eyes fell on the other woman's gun. She glanced up from it briefly to wave Jim back behind the desk, and studied him thoughtfully as he joined her in a relatively safe crouching position. Nodding decisively, she reached for the weapon, removing it cautiously from Sarah's still-firm grip.

"Pam…" Jim started nervously.

"Jim, someone has to. The rest of them could get here at any…"

Her sentence went unfinished as the door flew open, revealing a tall, imposing figure.


	8. Perambulation

A/N: We're getting close to the end here. One more big thank you to KathGrangerPotter and sgafan360 for their always-excellent beta work.

I don't own Chuck. I don't own the Office. If there be candor in the world, the truth of these assertions will not be questioned; posterity at least will do justice to them.

* * *

Chapter 8: Perambulation

The man in the doorway was quite tall, and while not bulky, appeared to be well-built enough that he could handle either Pam or Jim pretty easily in a fight, and have a good shot against both of them at once.

More importantly to Pam's eyes, he had a gun.

Pam stayed as low as she could behind the desk while aiming Sarah's weapon at the intruder. She needed to sell this one, and sell it hard.

"Drop it," she ordered firmly.

The man spun quickly, trying fruitlessly to scan the darkened room for threats. Pam shifted to the other side of the desk before speaking again, the better to disorient her listener.

"I have a clear shot at you," she remarked. "And I will take it, unless you put the gun down. NOW."

The man slowly and carefully lifted the shoulder strap from around his head, then set the semiautomatic weapon down on the floor. That done, he uttered his first word since entereing the room.

"Pam?"

The brunette tensed up so sharply that she nearly pulled the trigger. The only thing she'd been less prepared for than hearing her own name spoken by the erstwhile attacker was hearing it in a familiar voice.

"Chuck?"

"Where's Sarah?" he asked immediately.

"She's here," Jim called out. "Behind the desk."

The Halperts listened as Chuck scrambled through the dark room, bumping clumsily through the furniture in his haste to reach Sarah's side. Kneeling beside her, he tenderly caressed her cheek. "What happened?"

"The guy you tripped over on your way in got a shot off," Pam replied. "She's wearing a vest, but it knocked the wind out of her."

Chuck processed the information but didn't respond, focusing all his attention on murmuring comforting nonsensicalities into the ear of the unconscious blonde beside him. Her eyes fluttered open seconds later, and a sleepy smiled worked its way across her face. "Chuck?"

"Hey, Sarah. It's all right. I'm here," he whispered.

"I hate to interrupt… but can I ask how?" Jim queried cautiously.

"How am I here? I escaped," Chuck answered vaguely.

"Just like that? Didn't… I mean, they had guns," Jim protested.

Chuck shrugged. "They don't any more." He turned back to Sarah, who was coughing weakly in an effort to speak again.

"Kung Fu?" she managed.

Chuck grinned slightly and shook his head. "Kickboxing. I heard… Pam, I guess, screaming for you to wake up… and you can guess how it went from there."

Jim's eyebrows furrowed in consternation. "Uhh… some of us can't."

"Sorry. Need to know," Chuck replied diffidently. Turning back to Sarah, he noticed a confused frown crossing her features.

"Gun?" she asked.

"Oh!" Pam exclaimed softly. "That was me. Here," she offered, extending the firearm toward Sarah.

Chuck interrupted the exchange. "Why don't I hold onto this until she's back on her feet?" Pam quirked a surprised eyebrow at his casual request, but handed him the gun without comment.

"So you took care of the guards…" Jim probed cautiously.

"They're all unconscious," Chuck confirmed. "But we should still think about getting out of here, because we don't know if anyone else is on the way. Sarah, can you…"

The CIA agent pulled herself gingerly upward. "With a little help, maybe. But there's something we should do first. I need the watch." Jim nodded and removed the timepiece from his wrist. Sarah gestured toward her most recent shooting victim. "Put him in the chair," she instructed. The men complied, and she fastened the watch to the dead guard's wrist.

"Okay, now why did you do that?" asked Jim.

In reply, Sarah asked, "Anyone else hungry? I sure could go for something to eat."

* * *

The four friends settled into a booth at a quiet diner. Jim led off the conversation.

"What's with leaving the watch behind? You sure seemed freaked out about Chuck not having it before. And Chuck's been grinning so much that I'm sure his face is sore, so he must know something I don't here."

"Chuck?" Sarah prompted. "How much have you figured out?"

He shrugged. "Not everything. But enough that I'm looking forward to the reveal of what I'm sure is a brilliant scheme."

"You want to start it for me?" she offered.

"I'd hate to steal your moment."

"Oh, I think you can only add to the dramatic buildup. Plus, I like to see that brain of yours in action." That earned Sarah a brilliant smile from Chuck as he began his explanation.

"Okay, well my first clue that something was up was the fact that the rescue included Pam, rather than a government strike team. So I'm assuming that our government and I are… on the outs in some way," he said diplomatically. "My guess is that Sarah has an idea to rectify that situation, which somehow requires the government to be convinced of my continued presence in the warehouse. Am I pretty close?"

"Spot on," she confirmed.

"Spot on?" Chuck grimaced. "Cole Barker rubbed off on you far too much."

"And yet, it wasn't nearly as much as he would have liked," Sarah teased.

The grimace deepened. "Moving on… what's the plan?"

Sarah smiled sweetly. "I think it's time for us to kill you."

* * *

Casey answered the door just after the second set of knocks. It opened to reveal his partner. She looked like hell.

"Walker?"

Sarah's voice was shaky as she said, "I found him." Then she burst into tears.

Casey felt as though he'd been punched in the gut. "God, Walker, I'm sorry."

She collected herself enough to speak, although the tears kept coming. "Could you do something for me, John?"

"What do you need?"

"Could you call it in as though he's still alive, so they'll bomb the warehouse? I don't want them taking his body. You know what they'd do with him, John."

Casey did know. Even dead, the human Intersect would be an invaluable resource – the study of his brain would probably last years. He nodded his assent. "I can do that. Bartowski deserves at least that much."

"Thanks." Sarah paused, then quietly announced, "I'm going to run."

Casey stiffened. "I wish you wouldn't."

"I just can't help them any more," she sniffed. "Not after what they did to him."

"I know. But they'll expect me to track you down."

Sarah looked up in surprise. "It's all right, Casey. I understand you'll just be doing your duty."

Casey smiled sadly. "How about I give you a few hours' head start? It'll make the chase more interesting."

"Thanks." Sarah gave Casey a brief hug. "You were a great partner, Casey. The best."

"Yeah, you too." She turned to leave, but stopped briefly as the NSA agent called after her. "Walker? Good luck."

"Thanks."

* * *

Sarah lifted the bags into the trunk of the car she'd be taking across the country. She'd packed most of this luggage in advance, knowing that it was always best to be prepared for a hasty escape. With the clothes, cash, and extra IDs loaded, she added Orion's laptop and wrist computer, and finished the process by placing a medium-sized box in the back seat before entering the car through the passenger door.

"Nice job," the driver complimented.

"Yeah, well, when you grow up constantly on the move, you learn how to pack a car," she replied.

That earned her a grin. "Not what I was talking about."

"I didn't imagine it was," she confessed. "It went about as well as I could have hoped."

"You just manipulated the crap out of the NSA's best agent," the driver commented with awe in his voice. "You really are terrifying sometimes."

Sarah smiled winningly. "You like me anyway."

"Nah," he replied. "I love you."

"Enough to tell me what's in the secret box?" she asked innocently.

"Not yet."

* * *

"So I guess this is what they meant when they said it might be dangerous to stay here."

Jim glanced up as his wife broke the lengthy silence that had followed their return home. "Probably," he agreed.

"And it's not done yet," Pam continued.

"No," Jim affirmed. "They'll be watching us pretty closely."

"You know we don't have to…"

"I know," he interrupted. "But that kind of monitoring… I mean, the documentary crew got annoying after a while. This will be worse."

Pam nodded sadly. "So we'll wait to hear from them, and then…"

"Yeah."

"It's a lot to give up," she observed tentatively.

Jim gazed up at her adoringly. "It's nothing compared to what I'll still have."

Pam sank down on the couch next to him and slowly wrapped her arms around his shoulders. "Have I mentioned yet that I'm really glad you're alive?"

Jim smiled for the first time in hours. "Not as glad as I am," he replied, leaning down for a kiss.

* * *

In order to fully exploit the head start Casey had given them, the escaping pair made no stops outside of food and gas in the first thirty-six hours of the trip. Sarah finally declared that it was time for some rest beyond passenger seat naps once they reached Missoula, Montana. They pulled off at a cheap motel, and her companion collected their luggage and equipment from the trunk.

"All right, what's in this mysterious box that you insisted I collect?" Sarah asked.

"Hang on," he stalled. "We should make sure we've got our off-grid bases covered first."

"All right," she conceded. "We traded the Porsche for Jim and Pam's car, and switched the plates to the ones I bought for the imaginary car with the Pennsylvania registration. We've got plenty of cash, and untraceable credit cards for when that runs out – and I assume you can cover setting up new accounts for us as they become necessary?" Seeing the man's nod, she continued. "Multiple identities for each of us. We can be single or married as necessary. As far as a trail goes, we've given nobody any way to contact us or any hint of where we're going. Jim and Pam know only what they need to, which isn't enough to get us into warm water, let alone hot. What was it you told them to say again?"

"I think it was 'You'll know if we hear from her.'"

Sarah smiled. "Perfect, of course, because they will know, even if they aren't told. So yes, I think we're in good shape. Now let's crack open that box."

"Okay." The man pulled several small folders out of the box and spread them across the table. Sarah thought she saw him slip something into his pants pocket as he emptied the container, but pushed it from her mind as he began the presentation she'd been waiting for. "I kind of collected a series of mission reports from the most effective teams the intelligence community has working against Fulcrum. We're talking CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, the works. I count roughly 10 locations as the cream of the crop – Seattle, Minneapolis, Detroit, Dallas, Atlanta, DC, Boston, Cleveland, Denver, and St. Louis. Oh, and LA, of course."

"All right," Sarah nodded.

"Now, here are the files detailing what's happened to each of those teams," he continued. "Seven of them had at least one key agent go missing. Based on the scenes of the disappearances, they're all presumed dead. The others all had at least one member declared to be unreliable and cut off from governmental support, followed in all cases by the agents in question dropping off the grid. The worst case scenario is that they've all defected."

"So someone's going after our best teams," she summarized.

"Right," he confirmed. "Someone with enough access to find them – and apparently, someone with the ear of a director or two, if the findings of unreliability are any indication."

"So what ties it all together?"

"The Ring. Fulcrum's been damaged so badly that that they don't have the resources to put this kind of effort together, plus they're pretty well infiltrated at this point too, so we'd know if they were mounting something this big," he explained. "So the only way I see it making sense is if Fulcrum is… bait, more or less. They're intended to draw out the best agents from all of those agencies, and then the Ring cuts them off. That's why Fulcrum doesn't matter."

"But what's the Ring's angle in all this?" That drew a scowl.

"I don't know. But if it involves eliminating the most effective operatives of the United States government, I don't imagine it's anything good."

As Sarah quietly took in the information, a smile spread slowly across her face. "And you thought you weren't good enough."

"What?"

"You spent all that energy worrying that you were letting Bryce down because the Intersect wasn't making the connections. And then you made them yourself. Not the Intersect. Just you, Chuck."

"Yeah, I guess."

"You guess?" Sarah demanded incredulously. "This is amazing work! We need to figure out a way to pass it to Casey or Beckman without poking our heads up."

"We can't," Chuck insisted.

"What do you mean we can't? We have to do something about this."

"Oh, I know we do," he agreed hastily. "But we can't give it to Beckman. Her decision-making process is compromised. Two of the agents who were cut off from support were NSA – three, I guess, if you include me. I don't think we can trust anyone in the government with this – we have no idea how deep their penetration is."

Sarah pondered that answer and came up with no obvious course of action. "So what do we do?"

Chuck took a deep breath. "We take them down ourselves."

Sarah blinked. "What?"

"Isn't it basically what Bryce invited you to do against Fulcrum?"

"Bryce had government support," she temporized.

"Not most of the time," Chuck answered quickly. "He was going really deep, Sarah."

"I don't know, Chuck."

"I thought this was your dream assignment," he reminded her gently.

Her head dropped shyly. "My dreams are different now, Chuck."

He took her hand, a bright smile spreading across his face. "Yeah?"

"I want a normal life, a family, kids… and I want all of that with you."

"Sarah, I want all of that too. God, you have no idea how much I want that. But a big part of that dream is the chance to raise our kids safely. And I don't know how well we can do that if this country has been taken apart by a shadowy group of spies."

She sighed. "You're right. I know you're right. I just don't know if we can do it."

"Look, I know I'm new at this. But with Dad's help, I can take care of anything we need on the technical side. I'll learn to handle myself on the spying side too, if you don't mind teaching me," he promised. "And for everything else… you're Agent Sarah Walker! You can do anything!"

"Chuck, I have no doubt that you'd do great. I meant it when I said you can do anything," Sarah reassured him.

His lips twisted into a puzzled frown. "Then what are you worried about?"

"It's me, all right? When we were at the warehouse and I thought we'd lost your trail, I kind of came apart," she admitted reluctantly. "Agent Walker never would have done that. I don't know if I can be that person any more, and that's the person who would have gone deep with Bryce."

Chuck failed to hold back a grin. "That's it?"

"What do you mean, 'that's it?' That's everything! If I can't stay detached, I can't protect you, Chuck!"

"That's not what we're doing any more, Sarah," he admonished gently. "If we do this, it's not your job to protect me. It's our job to protect each other, and that's what we'll do. We'll have each other's backs, and we'll figure everything else out as we go. After all," Chuck said, slipping down to one knee and pulling a small velvet box out of his pocket, "that's what married people do, right?"

Sarah's eyes widened. "Chuck…"

"Sarah, will you marry me and then go off the grid with me to destroy an evil espionage organization?"

Sarah's smile lit up the room. "I can honestly say that I thought you'd never ask."

His blossoming grin froze briefly. "Wait, was that a yes?"

She laughed happily. "Yes, Chuck, I will marry you and then go underground to destroy the Ring."

Chuck's smile quickly matched Sarah's. "So… did I do good?"

Sarah slid the ring onto her finger, grasped Chuck's hands, leaned down, and kissed him. "Perfect."


	9. Resuscitation

A/N: Well, here we are at the last chapter. Deluxe thank baskets go out to both of my faithful betas, KathGrangerPotter and sgafan360, for their immeasurable assistance throughout the story. Slightly-less-impressive but still opulent expressions of gratitude are owed to all the readers and reviewers who have helped make writing this tale a far more enjoyable experience.

I suppose this would be a reasonable place for me to address the question of my plans for continued writing. If it seems like this story leaves a rather large spy plot hanging, that's because it does. However, my other existing serial, Sarah vs. the FBI, picks up where this one leaves off. So if you're interested in where the characters go from here, I'd recommend reading that one. As to whether there will be a third installment in the series (a threequel?), the answer is "maybe, but not for a while." I have a few other stories in mind that have been much more insistent on getting written, some of which I hope to begin publishing fairly soon.

Exceedingly minor technical note: I made a small adjustment to a previous chapter in order to have this chapter's timeline work out correctly. It affects the story in no way. Anyone who wants to put in the effort to find it will win... not really a prize, but my undying respect. Which I guess might count as a prize, if you're into that sort of thing.

The management of NBC's revenue—that searching operation in all networks—is among the most delicate and important trusts in theirs. Since I don't own Chuck or the Office, it will, of course, demand no share of my official solicitude.

* * *

Chapter 9: Resuscitation

"Sir?"

Casey looked up, quickly recovering from his distracted state – a state he'd occupied all too often since Walker's departure. With a sigh, he admitted to himself that Beckman had probably made the right call by not leaving him in charge of pursuing the rogue CIA agent.

"What is it, Agent Ray?"

"The Halperts are on the move."

Casey nodded in acknowledgement. He'd been left in Scranton to monitor the area for potential contacts from Walker. While Jim and Pam were by far the most likely to do anything, protocol demanded at least cursory monitoring of just about everyone she'd interacted with – her coworkers at the paper company, her neighbors, Casey's neighbors, or any of their friends and family. To accomplish this task, he'd been given a team of two recent trainees, both of them described by the General as "very promising." They were the first rookies Casey had worked with in a very long time. Both men handled basic tasks with relative competence. Both followed orders quickly and unquestioningly. The reports on the activities of their targets were always on Casey's desk promptly at 1800 hours, every day.

Casey was miserable.

Agents Ray and Sandberg (John and Ryan to their parents and nobody else) were glorified drones. Neither man had developed an original idea in the two weeks they'd spent in Pennsylvania. They presented the factual results of their investigations without even the slightest attempt at interpretation, leaving Casey to sift through the various trips to the video store, dinners at Chili's, and ATM withdrawals in a very likely futile effort to discern anything out of the ordinary. The senior agent was thankful that the assignment had been tame to this point, because there was no chance either of his partners could do something like… disarming a bomb with a computer virus.

Casey grimaced. He'd made a conscious, and mostly successful, effort to avoid thinking about Bartowski since Walker had given him the news. But given the unlikelihood of anything interesting happening, he decided to indulge in a bit of reminiscence…

The geek had driven him crazy ever since the first night they met. The simple reason was that he couldn't be counted on to obey orders, which was quite a pain in the ass. But the real issue was that he had always questioned them, looking to form his own interpretation of the situation. That had gotten the team into no end of trouble – and gotten them out of just as much, if not more. Overall, without even a hint of formal training, Chuck had performed better than any number of finely-honed agents would have in the same situations. Not that Casey would ever have admitted it to the nerd's face, but he'd turned himself into a hell of a spy.

"Sir? The Halperts are on the move," Ray repeated, having clearly missed Casey's silent response.

Casey once again snapped out of his reverie, telling himself in an entirely unconvincing fashion that he wouldn't slip back into it later. "Where are they going?"

"South on I-81."

That wasn't a route the couple had taken recently. "Pull up the video from the house." Agent Ray complied, and twenty seconds later Casey was watching the last eight hours of the front of the Halpert home in fast-forward. Their car entered the garage as they returned home from work… Pam went out to get the mail… she waved one piece of it at Jim as they entered the house. After about half an hour of nothing, the car pulled out of the garage once more. "Stop it there," Casey directed. "Zoom in on the car." Casey scowled at the resulting image. "Suitcases. They're going to the airport."

"They haven't purchased any plane tickets recently, sir, and none of their phone traffic has indicated that they're expecting guests."

If his subordinates hadn't proven immune to sarcasm, Casey would offered them a heavy dose of it while pointing out that nobody brings luggage to the airport in order to pick someone up. "Then someone else probably bought them the tickets. Get me the audio from their time in the house." Casey took over the computer displaying the video feed, and ran it back to Pam's collection of the mail. "What did you wave at your husband?" he muttered. Finding a promising frame, Casey zoomed in on… a postcard from Tijuana.

"Nothing on the audio, sir – they came into the house, packed some things up, and left," reported Agent Ray.

Casey silently cursed the lack of video surveillance of the home's interior. "Get Sandberg to the airport right away – I need to know where those two are going. You, get over to the house and see if they left anything useful." Casey simultaneously began to query the NSA's database of plane ticket purchases for departures from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International and dialed the phone number of DEA Agent Carina Miller, who'd been loaned to the NSA for the purpose of leading the search effort. "Carina? Casey. The Halperts are hopping a plane. Looks like they're off to Mexico."

"No, I don't think we should stop them – if we follow, they might lead us to her."

"Yes, I can handle taking the lead on this one, but I could use a couple more foot soldiers. And a chopper, if I can get it."

"Of course I'll keep you posted." Casey rolled his eyes and hung up.

* * *

Not quite 24 hours later, Casey sat in a hangar at a small NSA-operated airfield just outside San Diego. Sandberg had missed the Halperts at the airport in Pennsylvania, and Ray had found nothing interesting in the house; it had been left to Casey to deduce that the couple had caught their plane, and brought the postcard with them because it contained further instructions. Ray and Sandberg had taken a charter jet, beating Jim and Pam to Mexico easily. Casey had opted to stay in the country. He knew Walker wouldn't make things nearly that easy.

"We've got them, just coming out of the airport now. They're hailing a cab," Sandberg reported.

"Roger that. Stay on them," Casey instructed.

"They're stopping at a bank. Should we follow them in?"

Casey shuddered at the mental picture of the pair of tactless NSA agents walking into a foreign bank. "Ahh, negative, Sandberg. Wait for them out front. Let me know what they bring out."

"Yes sir."

Casey monitored the couple's ATM cards, getting no hits. Since they didn't seem to be stopping for cash, that probably meant a safe deposit box.

"Colonel, they're carrying a laptop computer and a manila folder," Sandberg announced.

Casey said nothing, waiting for the next report.

"They're pulling into a hotel."

"Follow them to their room," Casey ordered. "We need to see what's going on in there."

"Roger that," Sandberg acceded. "We'll put a camera in the window."

Casey breathed a quiet sigh of relief at the presence of windows. He had a hard time picturing either of the younger agents posing as a maid. "Make sure you can get a view even if they close the blinds. And try to get a look at that computer screen."

"They're not making it that difficult, sir," Sandberg replied. "The screen is facing the window."

Casey found the carelessness implied by that fact befuddling.

"Looks like they're setting up a webcam."

The colonel smiled thinly, congratulating himself on staying in the country. Border-related delays could be devastating when pursuing someone as elusive as Sarah Walker. He turned to the agents Carina had loaned him. "As soon as they make a call, I want to know where the return signal is coming from." They nodded.

"We've got an image on the screen, sir," the headset declared. "It looks like Walker."

"Can you tell where she is – any visual clues in the picture?" Casey demanded.

"No sir, she's being filmed against a blank white background." Sandberg paused. "Sir, she's wearing…"

"Spit it out, Sandberg," Casey commanded impatiently.

"It appears to be a wedding dress, Colonel."

Casey's eyes widened. He said nothing.

Sandberg's narration resumed after a brief pause. "All right, the camera's zooming out… there's someone with her."

Casey took a deep breath, forcing himself to ask the next question as calmly as possible. "What does he look like?"

"Tall guy, skinny, brown curly hair," the junior agent described. "Wearing a tux. Grinning like an idiot."

Another deep breath, this one followed by a slow, surprisingly satisfied exhalation. Casey leaned his head back and smiled, saying nothing until one of the agents in the hangar interrupted his thoughts.

"Sir, we have the destination IP address for the call."

"Can you get me the location?" he queried.

"It'll be a few minutes."

Casey nodded. "Do it as fast as you can." He keyed his radio. "What's going on there?"

"Walker and the guy are holding hands and facing each other. She gave some kind of a speech, now he's giving one," Sandberg relayed.

Casey debated over whether he should respond. He decided it might be worth the frustration to teach the youngster a lesson in thinking through a situation. "They're getting married."

"How's that, sir? There's nobody officiating," Sandberg objected.

Casey shook his head in desperate irritation. "She's off the grid. You think she's going to stick her head up to file for a marriage license?"

"I suppose not, sir. I just don't see the point of doing this."

Casey sighed and wondered what exactly to tell the younger man. "I wouldn't bother trying to understand the intricacies of lady feelings if I were you, Sandberg," he replied. "Let me know when they're done."

One of the men in the hangar tapped Casey nervously on the shoulder. "We're narrowing down the location," he reported. "It's coming from Los Angeles."

Casey blinked, again attempting to remain calm. "Los Angeles is a pretty big place. We'll need a little more than that."

"Yes sir," the technician replied, turning back toward his computer. "It appears to be an apartment complex in Echo Park."

Casey was running toward the helicopter before the man finished his sentence.

* * *

Casey and his team drew their weapons and covered the front door of the former Casa Bartowski. They'd learned during the chopper's flight that Ray and Sandberg had lost the Halperts upon their return to the airport. The couple had picked up tickets that had presumably been purchased for them under the new identities that Casey guessed had been contained in the folder they'd picked up from the bank. Their NSA tails couldn't follow them past security, since they weren't on US soil. So James and Pamela Harper, or whatever they were now called, had boarded their flight unmolested. Casey had no idea where they were going. He was, however, almost certain that they wouldn't be returning to Scranton and the accompanying governmental surveillance. That left the webcam transmission as the last remaining lead.

Casey found the location of that transmission befuddling. It made no sense for Walker to return to such a familiar location, one where she might be easily found. Creeping toward the window in hopes of accomplishing just that task, Casey saw…

An unknown woman cooking dinner for her husband and two children, who were watching TV in the living room. The Bartowskis' old home was occupied.

The answer struck him quickly. That apartment had been rented again – but it wasn't the one that had been extensively modified by NSA construction crews. Casey's own former residence was likely still empty.

He waved to the other pair of agents and pointed across the courtyard. As soon as they were all in position, the colonel kicked in the door. The first thing he saw was the laptop that had evidently been at the other end of Jim and Pam's call. Its webcam was pointed at a large high-definition TV, which was in turn hooked up to a DVD player. Casey strode quickly across the room, stabbing the play button with his index finger. The television displayed a scene he'd heard described to him over the radio mere hours earlier. He sighed, slumping his shoulders in apparent defeat – until he spied a second DVD, labeled CASEY, sitting on top of the player. He directed the other two agents to secure the area outside the apartment. Once he was alone, he inserted the disc into the laptop.

Chuck's face appeared on the screen, and despite himself, Casey smiled. "Casey, this message is for your eyes only, so we've set up a security question. The day I almost got extracted and the CIA robbed the Buy More, where did Big Mike's marlin end up?"

Casey's smile grew a little – Team Chuck would be the only three members of the espionage community that would know the answer to that question. _Wienerlicious freezer_, he typed.

Chuck actually nodded to accept the answer. "Either you're Casey, or you're Morgan, you've come back from Hawaii, and you've been picked up by scary men wearing black suits." The camera turned, now showing Sarah's face.

"Casey, first, I'm sorry I lied to you. But you know how this goes – one rogue agent draws a lot less attention than a rogue agent in the company of the human Intersect." Casey nodded along – she'd made exactly the same play he would have in her situation. "All right, so we have a couple of issues to think about. First, you need to decide whether to tell anyone that Chuck is alive. Obviously, I would prefer that you didn't. But I really think it'd be better for all involved if that information stays with you alone, or maybe with you and Beckman. After all, he's sitting out there with no governmental backup, and that would make him a very tempting target for Fulcrum. You know as well as I do what would happen if Chuck fell into their hands. If the government thinks he's dead, Fulcrum will too."

The camera swung back to Chuck. "Second, we should discuss the means of the government's continued pursuit of Sarah. I see three options for you here. First, you can give up, and put your resources to work against Fulcrum. Obviously, we'd like this one pretty well," he said with a smile. "If you don't bother us, we won't bother you – we'll stay off the radar, permanently. Second, you can keep coming after us by conventional methods. Frankly, this one doesn't bother us too much, because I can assure you that you'll never find us. But knowing Beckman's love for crossing i's and dotting t's, I suspect this will be the one she goes with. Your third option is to come after us by way of our friends and family." The nerd's face hardened to an extent Casey scarcely would have believed possible. "Let me tell you in no uncertain terms that this option is not acceptable. We would consider it the equivalent of an act of war, if we were a country. Please assure General Beckman that she does not want a war with us. Sarah and I are fair game. But Ellie, Devon, Jim, Pam, Morgan, Anna, either of our fathers… anyone like that is untouchable. Oh, and you can include yourself in that group as well – we'll go after her if she does anything beyond wrecking your career over this mess. Understood?"

Casey nodded, even though he knew his former asset couldn't see him.

Chuck's face softened as the camera panned back to show both of the newlyweds. They spoke in unison. "We'll miss you, Casey. Best of luck." Chuck then moved to occupy the whole screen once more, and announced, "This disc will self-destruct in ten seconds." He paused. "That's so cool, right? Dad taught me this trick." The screen went blank, and the laptop emitted an unpleasant-smelling white smoke.

Casey smiled as he leaned his head back. He began mentally formulating his report to Beckman and Carina: _The lead we discovered was indeed connected to Agent __Walker__. However, it appears to have been at least two days old at the time of discovery, and the trail has already gone cold. It is my recommendation that we continue to pursue __Walker__ for now, but we should also keep in mind that our efforts have met with very limited success. I find it very likely that we will be unable to come even this close again. Considering the fact that the ongoing struggle with Fulcrum commands a significant portion of the NSA's resources, I would recommend scaling back the pursuit of __Walker__ after a minimum of two months, and a maximum of six._ He grunted in satisfaction and walked over to the DVD player. Ejecting the recording of Chuck and Sarah's wedding, he briefly considered keeping it. Shaking his head, he reluctantly snapped the disc in half and walked out of his old apartment for the last time.

"Hey, Colonel Casey, who was that guy with Walker?" asked one of the other agents. "Didn't I see his picture in her file?"

"Some guy she knew from a previous job – analyst, I think. Guess they were closer than anyone realized," Casey replied relatively truthfully.

"No kidding. Hard to imagine a girl like Walker going for someone like him," the man said enviously.

Casey chuckled as he reflected on the two-plus years he'd spent on this mission. "Yeah, well, life will surprise you every once in a while."

He walked toward the dumpster in the complex's parking lot to dispose of the last remaining evidence of Chuck's survival. As he opened the lid of the waste container, his eyes glanced over the face of his watch. One piece of information in particular leapt out at him:

_9-24_.

That prompted a final smile from the NSA agent before he returned to his team and their fruitless mission. Tossing the halves of the disc into opposite corners of the dumpster, he then released the lid, allowing it to slam shut. Under the cover of the reverberating plastic-on-metal collision, Casey allowed himself a moment of whispered sentimentality.

"Happy birthday, Bartowski."


End file.
